Grants Search Results

Through this partnership with The Children's Cancer Foundation, proceeds from St. Baldrick's events in Hong Kong fund life-saving research in Hong Kong. The St. Baldrick's Foundation is proud to partner with the Children's Cancer Foundation and has been doing so since 2008.

This grant funded two projects. Project 1: Chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of a wide variety of cancer types are associated with potentially lethal cardiac damage. The study develops diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for chemotherapeutic-induced cardiotoxicity, which can aid in the diagnosis of it and reveal new therapeutic targets for the treatment of this kind of disorder. Project 2: Children suffering from relapsed / refractory acute myeloid leukemia have an extremely poor prognosis with limited treatment options. The development of novel therapeutics is, therefore, among the top priorities of scientific and medical communities.

This grant supports a dedicated Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Clinical Research Nurse to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate for the Cellular and Immunotherapy program to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a dedicated Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Clinical Trials Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a dedicated Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Clinical Research Coordinator to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Program Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more brain tumor patients can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

The originality of Dr. Ayrault’s team lies on the characterization of the putative relationship existing between mechanisms implicated into cerebellar development and medulloblastoma formation in order to uncover signaling pathway alterations and generate novel therapeutic strategies. As many tumor cells closely resemble to normal cells at a precise stage of the development, Dr. Ayrault foresees that his study will not only reinforce this new conceptual view of tumor cell biology but might also be generalized in oncogenesis. Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor. Medulloblastoma are divided in four subgroups. Two of them, Group 3 (G3) and Group 4 (G4), are still poorly understood. While genomic and transcriptomic analysis revealed key features of medulloblastoma subgroups, they have not totally revealed functional mechanisms implicated in G3/G4. Yet, a recent study from this group reveals that proteomic analysis may unveil unsuspected biological modifications in G3 and G4 medulloblastomas. Ultimately, by developing innovative technologies as well as investigating the crosstalk between developmental neurobiology and pediatric brain cancer, Dr. Ayrault hopes to fill the existing gap of knowledge in pediatric brain tumors and lead to major breakthroughs. The St. Baldrick’s Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award is given in honor of the late Dr. Robert Arceci. A pioneer in the field, this award reflects Dr. Arceci's values including creativity, collaboration, and commitment to early- to mid-career scientists.

This grant funds an undergraduate student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Raman spectroscopy (RS) is used to characterize different types of cancer tissue. Usually RS fingerprints are obtained when a slice of cancer tissue is examined under a microscope. With a new design as a portable hand-held RS probe, the St. Baldrick's Foundation Summer Fellow will use the probe to determine RS fingerprints in cancer cell cultures. If successful, the project results could be used to design uses of the probe in the clinic setting to detect cancer cells in blood or other fluids.

Most children diagnosed with cancer today will survive but will develop late complications of their cancer treatment. Childhood cancer survivors have almost twice the risk of diabetes compared to other adults. Diabetes is known to increase the risk of heart disease among survivors, and heart disease is the leading cause of non-cancer death among survivors. Prediabetes is easily diagnosed and begins months to years before diabetes. However, little is known about prediabetes risk-factors and prevention in survivors, despite reports that up to 1 in 3 survivors have prediabetes. Using treatment information and recent assessment of over 3,500 adult survivors of childhood cancer, this research will identify the extent of prediabetes among survivors, characterize what cancer-treatments increase risk, and determine how quickly these survivors develop diabetes. Research will then establish if a medication and lifestyle intervention to prevent diabetes in prediabetic survivors is safe and achievable. This will inform a future diabetes intervention trial with the goal of improving long-term survival and quality of life for childhood cancer survivors.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Bonifant was awarded a new grant in 2022 and 2023 to fund an additional year of this Scholar grant. There is a clear need for new treatment options for pediatric relapsed or refractory acute leukemia. Patients receiving standard chemotherapy regimens continue to suffer a poor prognosis. Immunotherapy has the potential to fulfill this need through its precise tumor targeting and novel anticancer biology. Recently, a type of immune cell, the T cell, has been genetically modified to specifically recognize leukemia cells through a specialized receptor (CAR). Infusion of CAR-T cells has shown stunning anti-leukemia activity in clinical trials. However, this approach has key limitations. Importantly, CAR-T cell persistence in each patient is critical to ensure continued disease remission. Alterations in leukemia surface protein expression have also been reported as a mode of CAR-T evasion. These may lead to disease relapse. Dr. Bonifant and her colleagues believe they can introduce new elements to existing chimeric receptors to promote improved CAR-T survival. They also believe they can alter these cells to target more than one surface antigen -- to prevent antigen loss and CAR-T escape, while enhancing specific disease targeting. The overall rationale for this proposal is the confidence in CAR-T cells as a powerful addition to anti-leukemia therapy. Dr. Bonifant would like to facilitate continued improvement of this therapeutic modality in order to ultimately attain durable cures.

The 2021, 2022, and 2023 portions of this grant are funded by and named for Emily Beazley's Kures for Kids Fund, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. At the age of 8, Emily was diagnosed with Stage III T-cell lymphoblastic non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and battled through three relapses. Her family prayed for a miracle but discovered Emily herself was the miracle, inspiring a community to come together to show love and change lives. She had a dream of starting a foundation to fund research and named it “Kures for Kids”. Today, Emily's family and friends carry on her dream and her mission in her memory.

The 2020 portion of this grant is funded by and named for the Rally for Ryan Fund, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. Ryan was diagnosed with high risk ALL when he was seven years old. He endured 3 ½ years of often harsh treatments with smiles, laughter and a brave acceptance that this was his fight to win. And Ryan did prevail—he took his last chemo pill in January 2016 but relapsed at the end of the year. He endured CAR T-cell therapy and a bone marrow transplant and is once again cancer-free. This fund honors Ryan’s commitment to help make a difference for kids with cancer.

Leukemia is the most common form of childhood cancer. While most children with leukemia can be cured, patients whose leukemia comes back after an initial response to therapy are very difficult to treat and often die of their disease. As the Ty Louis Campbell Foundation St. Baldrick's Fellow, Dr. Levinson studies one of the classes of medicines used to treat leukemia called "glucocorticoids" (a type of steroid), in a type of leukemia called T-cell ALL. Though glucocorticoids are usually very good at killing leukemia cells, some patients have been found to not respond (or be "resistant") to glucocorticoids, while others develop resistance over time, making their disease far more difficult to treat. Dr. Levinson's research is focused on understanding how and why such resistance develops in an effort to identify ways to overcome it and, ultimately, increase the percentage of children with T-cell ALL who can survive their disease.

This grant is funded by and named for the Ty Louis Campbell Foundation, a St. Baldrick's partner, created in memory of Ty Louis Campbell who lost his battle with brain cancer at the age of five. The Foundation seeks less toxic, more effective treatments that are specifically designed for children fighting cancer. Their ultimate mission is to help fund the intelligence and technology that will uncover new ways to cure children with cancer.

Dr. Resnick's research project focuses on how to cure one of the deadliest brain tumors in children called diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs), previously also known as diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs). No available cancer treatments work against DMGs and children die from this lethal disease within 8-11 months of diagnosis. To improve survival and develop better treatment against DMGs, he assessed genes being turned on or off in DMG tumor cells. Together with colleagues, he has identified novel gene products common in multiple DMG tumors that arise when two unrelated genes join and become expressed as one novel protein entity. Here, he will study the role of these gene products, or gene fusions, in DMGs, specifically those involving a known cancer-causing gene called MET. He will test drugs that target the MET gene fusions in DMGs by performing experiments on models that accurately represent human DMG tumors. The results from this project will help identify new drug treatment strategies to target DMG tumors in children. Successful therapy options from this study will be made available to children with DMGs in real-time through our partnership with a clinical trial consortium that brings new treatments to children with brain tumors.

Pediatric cancers are often comprised of mixtures of cells with different characteristics. Some of the most important differences relate to chromosomal changes, with some cells having a normal or nearly normal chromosome profile, others having altered numbers of intact chromosomes, and yet others having extra or missing copies of one or more chromosome segments. Prior studies have shown that cancers with more segmental changes are usually more aggressive and therapy-resistant, but the specific effects associated with the different chromosomal changes are unknown. Here Dr. Cobrinik and colleagues will define the effects of such changes in two pediatric cancers -- retinoblastoma and neuroblastoma -- by isolating individual cells within the tumors that either have or lack specific chromosome changes, comparing their overall gene expression and cell signaling profiles, and identifying the critical changes that increase malignancy. The study involves three investigators with expertise in neuroblastoma, retinoblastoma, and a novel single cell sequencing approach that enables us to distinguish and characterize the chromosomally distinct cells within individual tumors in unmatched detail. This study is expected to reveal the most central features that distinguish more versus less aggressive cancers, as a critical step towards targeting and subduing the more aggressive and lethal cells within individual tumors.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Consortium for Childhood Cancer Predisposition. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Emory University, Atlanta, GA.