Grants Search Results

This grant helps provide staffing to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, their best hope for a cure, at this institution. A Clinical Research Associate is involved not in the child's treatment, but in the opening of clinical trials and coordinating the collection and submission of bodily tissues and information for each child on a clinical trial. Without these crucial functions, which are often hard to fund, clinical trials cannot continue to advance toward cures, and children are not offered the most up-to-date treatment options.

This grant helps provide necessary resources at this institution to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, their best hope for a cure.

This grant helps provide necessary resources at this institution to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, their best hope for a cure.

This grant helps provide necessary resources at this institution to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, their best hope for a cure.

This grant helps provide necessary resources at this institution to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, their best hope for a cure.

This grant helps provide necessary resources at this institution to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, their best hope for a cure.

The goal of this proposal is to identify tumor suppressor genes that are "turned off" by DNA methylation and contribute to the formation of Ewing Sarcoma, a type of bone cancer that affects teenagers and young adults. This study searches for a better understanding of Ewing Sarcoma and the development of better treatments.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Arvanitis was awarded a new grant in 2011 to fund an optional third year of this fellowship. Osteosarcoma is the most common pediatric bone cancer, which frequently spreads (or metastasizes) to the lung and is then often fatal. Dr. Arvanitis is studying the role of transendothelial migration in osteosarcoma, with the ultimate goal of developing therapies against metastases in pediatric cancers.

The Ewings sarcoma family of tumors (ESFTs) is the second most common cancer of bone and soft tissue in children, and has a 20-30% overall survival rate in those children with widespread disease. Dr. Dela Cruz is working to understand the pathways involved in the development of ESFTs, which will be essential to discovering new molecular targets to treat and cure these patients.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Mulcahy-Levy was awarded a new grant in 2011 to fund an optional third year of this fellowship. Understanding how cancer cells die is important in designing new therapies and improving the effectiveness of currently used therapies to cure childhood cancers. One element of cell death is called autophagy, a system the cell uses to break down as it dies, the focus of Dr. Mulcahy-Levy's project.

This research focuses on hematopoietic progenitor/stem cell (HPC) transplantation. (These stem cells are not embryonic; they are present in everyone's bone marrow and can be harvested from donors.) Dr. Parekh is working on methods to expand HPC to facilitate the use of cord blood and the use of gene therapy to treat leukemia, an important step toward a cure.

Based on progress to date, Oren Becher, M.D., AmWINS St. Baldrick's Scholar, was awarded a new grant in 2012 to fund an additional two years of this Scholar award. Brainstem glioma is a rare subtype of brain tumor found mostly in children, which cannot be cured with today's treatments. Dr. Becher’s research suggests that one major obstacle for progress in the treatment of these brain tumors is limited drug delivery due to the blood-brain-barrier, a protective mechanism that prevents the delivery of toxic chemicals into our brains (in this case- the cancer drugs). Dr. Becher is working with genetic models to find new ways to improve the delivery of cancer drugs to these brain tumors.

This grant is named for AmWINS, a wholesale insurance holding company, which has raised more than $1 million for childhood cancer research through the St. Baldrick's Foundation.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Chang was awarded a new grant in 2012 to fund an additional two years of this Scholar award. One subtype of pediatric leukemia that continues to have a poor prognosis is Philadelphia chromosome positive Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (Ph+ALL). Dr. Chang is researching a unique protein called survivin, in hopes of developing it as a new target for future therapy for Ph+ALL patients.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Lee was awarded a new grant in 2012 to fund an additional two years of this Scholar award. Natural killer cells (NK cells), one of the white blood cells of our immune system, have the ability to kill several types of cancers in children, including AML, neuroblastoma, osteosarcoma, and Ewing's sarcoma. Dr. Lee's research involves more effective ways to use NK cells to fight childhood cancers.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a potentially deadly form of childhood leukemia. Dr. Vaiselbuh is studying how AML cancer cells resist chemotherapy with the goal of finding a new strategy for treatment of childhood myeloid leukemia.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Volchenboum was awarded a new grant in 2012 to fund an additional two years of this Scholar award. Neuroblastoma strikes in many forms, some requiring little or no therapy, others deadly despite very aggressive treatment. Current tests that differentiate among these types can take weeks. Dr. Volchenboum is developing software to make real-time diagnosis possible, allowing therapy to be better tailored to the specific child. Once validated, these new technologies can be extended to other pediatric cancers.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Yustein was awarded a new grant in 2012 to fund an additional two years of this Scholar award. Many human malignancies have abnormal expression or activity of a protein called c-Myc, leading to genetic changes critical to tumor survival and growth. Dr. Yustein's research is on the role c-Myc plays in Ewings sarcomas, osteosarcomas and rhabdomyosarcomas.

Cancer is a disease caused by mistakes in the DNA of tumor cells. Identifying all these mistakes in a single type of cancer has been slow, but understanding them will revolutionize the way cancer is diagnosed and treated. This project makes use of exciting new developments in "sequencing technology" to identify all the DNA mistakes in neuroblastoma. This is the very first such effort ever undertaken for a pediatric cancer, and leverages the support and expertise of investigators at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the Children's Oncology Group and Johns Hopkins University.

Pleuropulmonary blastoma (PPB) is a rare but biologically important lung cancer of young children. Recently identified inherited genetic mutations predispose children to developing PPB, leukemia and other childhood tumors arising in the muscle, brain, ovary and kidneys. To understand how these tumors form and progress, this research uses models based upon genetic discoveries in families with hereditary PPB, by identifying the cellular events responsible for PPB initiation and progression. This is an essential step toward developing ways to detect, treat and improve outcomes for children with PPB and the related tumors associated with this inherited cancer predisposition syndrome.

Through this partnership with Childhood Cancer Canada, proceeds from St. Baldrick's head-shaving events throughout Canada are distributed to Canadian institutions through the C17 Research Network. St. Baldrick's is proud to work with Childhood Cancer Canada and has been doing so since 2008.