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Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive bone and soft tissue cancer that primarily affects children and adolescents. Patients often suffer severe side-effects from treatment and there are no second-line therapies for relapsed tumors. It is critical that we develop new and less toxic treatments for this cancer. Ewing Sarcoma is caused by a rearrangement of DNA that fuses pieces of two different proteins together to form a new protein. This new protein, called EWS-FLI1, can turn on genes that should not be on, leading to the transformation of the cell into an Ewing Sarcoma tumor. This fusion protein has features that make it very difficult to study, it sticks to itself and does not have a structure, a good analogy is that it behaves like a piece of cooked spaghetti. As the Shohet Family Fund for Ewing Sarcoma Research St. Baldrick's Scholar, Dr. Libich is utilizing his background in working with similar proteins that do not have structure. He is using NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) which works just like MRI, to peer into the protein to understand exactly how it functions. This information is critical for designing molecules (drugs) that will be able to only affect the function of EWS-FLI1 and thus open new ways of attacking Ewing's sarcoma.

This grant is funded by and named for the Shohet Family Fund for Ewing Sarcoma Research. In his freshman year of college, Noah was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma. He endured many months of chemotherapy and had limb salvage surgery. Able to return to school, Noah had no evidence of disease for 2½ years until April 2018 when routine scans revealed he had relapsed. He passed away in May 2021 at the age of 25. Noah and his family were always passionate about the need for curative treatments for diseases of the AYA population. The Shohet family intends to raise funds for this Hero Fund in Noah's memory to find cures for Ewing sarcoma and to carry on his legacy of possibilities and hope.