Grants Search Results

Oklahoma Children's has joined the Beat Childhood Cancer Research Consortium, a group of 50+ hospitals that work together to develop new treatments towards treating pediatric cancer. 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 funding towards positions to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

Golisano Children's Hospital is committed to providing excellent care to all children, adolescents and young adults who are being treated or have been treated with cancer in their region. 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 Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Phoenix Children's offers early-phase clinical trials for children with cancer, enabling patients to receive the newest, most promising treatments available. This grant supports a 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.

Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in children. While multimodal therapy for medulloblastoma at diagnosis has resulted in improved outcomes, there are very few options at the time of relapse, with overall poor survival. Preclinical data have shown anti-tumor activity with liothyronine (T3, activated thyroid hormone) in medulloblastoma models. T3 has safety data and dosing which are available for children. Dr. Ronsley and colleagues will translate these preclinical findings into a clinical trial, which will treat children and adolescents with relapsed medulloblastoma with T3 in combination with chemotherapy and evaluate both safety and efficacy and the role for monitoring with liquid biopsy.

This grant is named for Hannah’s Heroes, a Hero Fund established to honor Hannah Meeson. At age 6 she was diagnosed with anaplastic medulloblastoma. After a relapse and additional treatment, Hannah currently shows no evidence of disease. Throughout her treatments, Hannah never complained and remained positive and happy. This fund pays tribute to her fight by raising awareness and funding for all childhood cancers because kids like Hannah “are worth fighting for.”

The most difficult cases of Ewing sarcoma to treat are when it comes back after completing initial treatment. Dr. Brian Ladle and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and the National Cancer Institute believe the immune system is capable of mounting a powerful immune response against Ewing sarcoma as an effective treatment. Dr. Ladle and team will identify the best immune targets in Ewing sarcoma and discover ways to activate the immune system against the most promising targets. These targets will be tested in their lab using models.

To make a significant impact for kids fighting Ewing sarcoma, five funding partners have banded together with St. Baldrick’s to support this grant – Advancing Cures for Ewing Sarcoma (ACES) award supported by the Sam Day Foundation, The Faris Foundation, Rutledge Cancer Foundation, The Shohet Family Fund for Ewing Sarcoma Research (a St. Baldrick’s Foundation Hero Fund), and Alan B. Slifka Foundation.

Mixed Phenotype Acute Leukemia (MPAL) is a subtype of leukemia that shares features of the 2 most common types of leukemia: acute myeloblastic leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Unfortunately, it is really hard to cure with no consensus treatment. When cells divide, chromosomes can break and the pieces can re-attach to the wrong place resulting in a chromosomal translocation. This new abnormal chromosome can result in the expression of a new gene and a new protein, called a "fusion protein". In MPAL, a common translocation involves the ZNF384 gene that can be fused to over 20 new genes, but the consequences are not well understood. Dr Libbrecht has identified that a novel drug that inhibits BRM/BRG1, essential proteins that maintain the DNA structure, and can kill MPAL cells in vitro. Her studies aim to better understand how BRM/BRG1 inhibition affects the ZNF384 fusion proteins and MPAL cells to validate it as novel therapy for MPAL.

Neuroblastoma (NB) is a deadly childhood cancer. Children with NB are classified as high-risk (HR) due to genetics or metastatic disease. Metastatic disease occurs when tumor cells (TC) leave the original tumor and travel to distant organs and develop into new tumors by a complex set of steps. Before tumor cells can form metastasis, they often go through a long period of dormancy (rest) to evade therapy. In NB, the bone marrow is the most common site of metastasis and relapse. The MYCN_TT is a unique model of NB, that spontaneously metastasizes to distant sites such as kidney marrow (equivalent to bone marrow). Dr. Anderson and colleagues will utilize the MYCN_TT model in understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying metastasis and dormancy, which will inform the development of novel therapeutic strategies for HR-NB.

Vincristine is a chemotherapy drug commonly used to treat cancer in children and young adults, but it can cause vincristine-induced peripheral neuropathy (VIPN), a side effect that leads to numbness, pain, weakness, and difficulty with balance. These symptoms can severely impact daily life and may require chemotherapy dose reductions or discontinuation, potentially affecting cancer treatment outcomes. Currently, doctors use a grading system to assess VIPN severity, but this method is not sensitive enough to detect early symptoms and is difficult to implement consistently. Therefore, there is a need for a more reliable and accessible way to identify VIPN early. Dr. Belsky will utilize a potential solution of a blood test to measure neurofilament light chain (NfL), a substance released during nerve damage. Dr. Belsky and colleagues will explore whether NfL levels can detect VIPN in children and young adults to improve the ability to monitor nerve damage, enabling doctors to adjust treatments earlier, optimizing cancer care.

Ewing sarcoma is a devastating childhood bone cancer. Doctors treat these pediatric patients with toxic chemotherapies, radiation, and surgery. Dr. Langdon and colleagues will develop targeted combination therapies to safely and effectively kill Ewing sarcoma cells. Dr. Langdon finds changing where proteins are normally found in cancer cells create potential new targetable vulnerabilities for Ewing sarcomas. Each vulnerability is thought of as a new "Achilles heel" for these cancers. Dr. Langdon and colleagues believe that combining two drugs - one which changes where proteins are normally found and one which targets the new vulnerability - will kill Ewing sarcomas. Dr. Langdon's team will look to why these drugs work so well against Ewing sarcomas and determine if they are truly safe and effective.

Teens with leukemia go through tough treatments that make them feel tired and weak, so they spend a lot of time sitting and lying down, which can make side effects worse and put them at risk for chronic diseases like diabetes. Dr. Ivory is testing ReSeT, a program she developed for teenagers getting leukemia treatment to interrupt sitting time with short exercise breaks that will likely improve their lifestyles, heart health, and quality of life. Over 10 weeks, each teenager will use a Fitbit, health coaching, and an app-based support group to slowly increase their activity. After testing ReSeT in 30 teenagers to see if they can do it and what they think, she will fine-tune ReSeT and test it again in 10 more teenagers and compare how they do with 10 teenagers who didn't get the program to see if the program works. The goal is to use small behavior changes to help teenagers with cancer be more active during and after treatment to improve their lifelong health.

Neuroblastoma (NB), a cancer that commonly affects young children, often presents with aggressive clinical behavior and poor prognosis, making the identification of effective therapeutic targets essential. NB is known for its resistance to conventional chemotherapy, and one of the mechanisms contributing to this resistance is the activation of a key regulator of gene expression, known as 'NF-kB’. NF-kB activates the expression of genes that contribute to NB survival. NF-kB also plays a role in promoting spread of NB to other parts of the body (e.g. bone marrow, liver, and lymph nodes). Because of its critical role in regulating survival, inflammation, and metastasis, NF-kB presents an attractive target for novel therapeutic strategies in NB. Inhibition of the NF-kB pathway can potentially sensitize NB cells to chemotherapy, reduce tumor growth, and inhibit metastasis. Dr. Letterio and colleagues will explore the activity of a new class of drugs (known as SOTs), that are potent inhibitors of NF-kB.

This grant is named for David's Warriors, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. The fund was created in memory of David Heard who battled neuroblastoma until his passing at the age of ten. David inspired his family and countless others to commit to raising money for research to fight pediatric cancer through the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. The Fund honors the amazing spirit with which he lived, embracing life until the very end.

A subset of deadly pediatric cancers, known as sarcomas, are caused by a mysterious, mutated protein called CIC::DUX4. Treating this disease is very difficult, in part because little is known about its biology. The teams of Dr's. Wood and Hendrickson have assembled the world's best collection of CIC::DUX4 laboratory models, using them to discover that CIC::DUX4 sarcomas require a protein called COP1 for their survival, whereas normal tissues in bodies do not. Dr. Wood and colleagues will perform studies to understand how well future drugs targeting COP1 will work as therapies for this deadly disease while defining why this disease needs COP1 in the first place. Together, these studies will identify a highly promising new therapeutic strategy for CIC::DUX4 sarcoma while also revealing insights that could lead to additional new types of drugs for this disease.

Brain cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in children, highlighting the urgent need for more effective treatments. While chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has transformed outcomes for children's blood cancers, it has shown limited success in brain tumors. Dr. Huang and colleagues will initiate a phase I trial in children with HGG and DIPG to assess safety and immune effects utilizing the understanding that CD70, a protein driving tumor growth, is a promising CAR T-cell target for high-grade gliomas (HGG) and diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG).

Dr. Stanton and colleagues are developing new approaches to understand how DNA is organized for gene expression in a lethal childhood tumor called rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS). In RMS, the standard of care therapies haven't changed substantially in 40 years and patient outcomes haven't improved greatly during this time. New approaches are desperately needed. There is a lack of a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms for how the cancer-causing genes function in RMS. Dr. Stanton and his team are integrating cutting edge approaches in synthetic biology, modeling, and genomics to understand how and why RMS forms, with the granularity of single gene targets for mechanism studies. Through Dr. Stanton's studies, the community will gain an understanding of how the cancer-causing genes are altering the organization of DNA in RMS cells.

This grant is funded by and named for the Aiden's Army Fund, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. Aiden Binkley who was diagnosed with Stage IV rhabdomyosarcoma at age 8. This bright, funny and courageous little boy believed he got cancer so he could grow up to find a cure for it. His vision is being carried on by Aiden’s Army through the funding of research. They will march until there is a cure!

This grant funds a student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Dr. Satake and colleagues are studying a rare and aggressive childhood kidney cancer called malignant rhabdoid tumor of the kidney (RTK). Children with RTK have extremely poor outcomes (survival rate 25%) despite lots of different treatments since tumors continue to grow even with treatment and tend to relapse. They believe that the investigational drug called OTS964 may be a new potential treatment. They also believe that OTS964 may be even more effective when used with navitoclax, a drug which has a different mechanism of killing cancer cells. In this project They plan to test the new treatment using these drugs in a human RTK mouse model, and to study the mechanism of actions, with the goal of finding a new treatment for RTK patients. This work is being completed under the mentorship of Dr. Noriko Satake.

The most common source of pain when treating children is needles. Avoiding painful procedures is a cause of stopping treatment for children with cancer in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Dr. McNeil and colleagues will utilize an evidence-based care bundle to reduce needle pain based off of past results used in hospitals with LMICs with high patient and parent satisfaction which reduced pain by a significant amount. Keeping in mind the large differences in resources and cultures between the different hospitals, Dr. McNeil and colleagues will be able to understand the key features of using the care bundle in different hospitals. Dr. McNeil's team will identify different adaptations each hospital uses and study the ability of a hospital to continue to implement care.

Modern pediatric cancer diagnosis requires the ability to perform and interpret molecular studies including gene-specific assays as well as sequencing studies to capture mutations specific to pediatric cancer that are important for diagnosis and treatment stratification. Such assays are widely available in developed countries and most hospitals have trained molecular pathologists who can carry out and interpret these studies. These are highly technical skills that require at least a year of hands-on training. In many Low and Medium Income Countries (LMIC) including Mexico, there are very few trained molecular pathologists, limiting the ability to provide adequate diagnosis for cancer patients. Dr. Ramirez-Ristori will obtain this training at the University of California, San Francisco and return to Mexico to become the very first fully trained molecular pediatric pathologist in the entire country.

The AACR-St. Baldrick's Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research has been established to bring attention to major research discoveries to the pediatric cancer research community and to honor an individual in any sector who has significantly contributed to any area of pediatric cancer research, resulting in the fundamental improvement of the understanding and/or treatment of pediatric cancer. The recipient will nominate an emerging leader conducting research in the academic sector to receive a research grant. The 2025 SBF-AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research went to Dr. Charles Mullighan at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Inc.. Dr. Nicole Michmerhuizen at the University of Rochester Medical Center received the 2025 research grant. Dr. Michmerhuizen's research interest is in Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML).