Grants Search Results

This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to facilitate early-phase pediatric oncology clinical trials in the South Plains Oncology Consortium (SPOC) and ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

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

Memorial Health University Medical Center has developed a dedicated Adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer program to provide better care and to encourage participation of these patients in clinical trials that will ultimately lead to better treatment outcomes.This grant supports a Clinical Oncology Social Worker to support the AYA Cancer Program and ensure that more AYA 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.

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 bilingual clinical research staff to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant funds a Nurse Practitioner for the the Childhood Cancer Survivorship Program. The program also provides critical patient data for survivorship researchers.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Nurse Coordinator for the Adolescent Young Adult Cancer Center Program at Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, 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 patient navigator to ensure that more adolescents and young adults (AYA) can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a scientific meeting to plan a clinical trial for osteosarcoma, focused on using genomic data to define subgroups to receive targeted therapy combined with chemotherapy.

Do you ever get a cold sore on your lip, or know someone who does? That sore is caused by a virus that destroys the cells in your lip. As the virus spreads, the sore gets bigger. Viruses are great at killing cells and spreading. But, the sore eventually goes away because the immune system attacks the infected cells, killing them and stopping the viral infection, allowing your lip to heal. Imagine if we could get both the virus and the immune system to kill cancer cells instead of lip cells! Previously Dr. Haworth's team used a safe version of the cold sore virus to infect a common type of hard-to-treat childhood cancer cells. The virus directly killed cancer cells and caused the immune system to attack the cancer cells that the virus missed. Dr. Haworth's team is testing ways to make the virus and immune system work better together. Dr. Haworth is infecting model tumors with the virus, and giving immune cells designed to attack the tumor, hypothesizing that giving both virus and immune cells will cure the tumor. Awarded at The Research Institute at Nationwide and transferred to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Rhabdoid tumors are highly aggressive cancers that affect infants. Current treatments mostly fail, or provoke severe long-term side-effects. Among promising innovative treatments, immunotherapy has few side-effects and show spectacular efficacy in some adult cancers. Immunotherapy restores the ability of our immune system to reject cancer cells, thanks to their numerous genetic abnormalities. Dr. Bourdeaut's project consists in understanding how rhabdoid tumor cells, which harbor no genetic abnormality, may escape this rejection or, in contrary, how they may be recognized by the immune system. Understanding this may have unexpected and broad consequences for the treatment of RT and other poorly mutated cancers.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Reducing Ethnic Disparities in Acute Leukemia (REDIAL) Consortium. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX.

This grant funds two medical students to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. The experience may encourage them to choose childhood cancer research as a specialty.

This grant funds a doctoral student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. The experience may encourage them to choose childhood cancer research as a specialty.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Agarwal was awarded a new grant in 2020 to fund an additional year of this Scholar grant. High-risk neuroblastoma is an aggressive cancer of very young children with less than 50% overall survival. Current therapy includes high-dose chemotherapy and radiation, which has long-term toxic side-effects. Despite these intensive therapies, neuroblastoma commonly relapse. This relapse is the primary cause of death from neuroblastoma due to disease spread, drug-resistance, and toxicity. As the Oliver Wells Fund for Neuroblatoma St. Baldrick's Scholar, Dr. Agarwal is focusing his research on developing effective therapeutic approaches to target those tumor cells which escape initial treatment and regenerate drug-resistant disease. Recently, Dr. Agarwal's team discovered a chemotherapy-resistant, highly tumorigenic sub-population of cells in neuroblastoma tumors. These cells escape initial therapy and may cause aggressive, drug-resistant relapsed disease. Furthermore, they found that specific epigenetic enzymes maintain this cell sub-population by activating key genes. These epigenetic modifiers can be successfully targeted with novel epigenetic inhibitors, currently under pre-clinical trials. These exciting findings suggest a new epigenetic therapeutic approach for high-risk neuroblastoma. This grant supports efforts to uncover the mechanisms controlling neuroblastoma tumorigenicity and relapse, and develop an effective targeted approach for high-risk neuroblastoma.

A portion of this grant is funded by and named for the Oliver Wells Fund for Neuroblastoma, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. From the moment he was born, Ollie was the center of the Wells family with a contagious smile and a sparkle in his eyes. As the youngest child, it was devastating when they learned the 15 year old toddler had cancer. Oliver was diagnosed with high risk neuroblastoma and spent the next 13 months bravely enduring chemotherapy and radiation, more than a dozen surgeries and a bone marrow transplant. But Ollie persevered and smiled through it all. It was an unfair fight from the beginning and in July 2018, Ollie passed away. The Oliver Wells Fund for Neuroblastoma was established in his memory to raise funds to find cures and give hope to other kids facing the same fight. In this way, the Wells family intends to share Oliver’s joy for life and use his story to help find a cure. 

A portion of this grant was also funded by and 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.

Awarded at the Baylor College of Medicine, and transferred to St. John's University.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Cimmino was awarded a new grant in 2020 to fund an additional year of this Scholar grant. Vitamin C is essential for maintaining healthy hair, skin, immune system and heart function. In addition to these health benefits, Dr. Cimmino and team propose that vitamin C might be a non-toxic therapeutic for the treatment of patients with pediatric acute myeloid leukemia. Recently, it was discovered that vitamin C enhances the activation of a group of enzymes called TET proteins that are required for normal blood development. A significant fraction of children and young adolescents with acute myeloid leukemia have mutations in TET2, causing impaired TET2 activity and a block in normal blood cell formation. However, only one of the two copies of the TET2 gene is defective in these patients. Dr. Cimmino's team is working to determine if treatment with high-dose vitamin C could enhance the activity of the remaining, non-mutant, TET2 protein, kill leukemia cells and restore normal blood development. Alternative therapies such as treatment with vitamin C might provide a safe and effective strategy to improve outcome for pediatric leukemia patients. Awarded at the New York University School of Medicine, and transferred to University of Miami.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Gowda was awarded a new grant in 2020 to fund an additional year of this Scholar grant. Children with high risk B-cell leukemia, especially with loss or dysfunction of IKZF1 gene have very poor outcomes and high relapse rate. Every other child who relapses with high risk leukemia dies from the disease and there has not been much advancement in treatment for this group for the last 30 years. Dr. Gowda and team have found that a cancer promoting protein called casein kinase II (CK2) impairs the important functions of a protein that helps prevent leukemia. Inhibiting the CK2 protein will restore the ability of this protein to function properly and prevent leukemia. Dr. Gowda's team is testing if using a drug that inhibits CK2 protein along with the drugs that already are known to work in leukemia will have stronger anti-leukemia effect and improve the outcome. Using two agents that target same gene or pathway via different mechanisms will ensure effective shutdown of the particular pathway resulting in strong therapeutic effect. This strategy would also help lower the doses of each drug used and reduce their side effects and associated toxicity.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Green was awarded a new grant in 2020 to fund an additional year of this Scholar grant. High-grade gliomas (HGG) are aggressive brain cancers that affect both adults and children. Current treatment options are very limited, and the vast majority of patients die of their tumors within five years of diagnosis. One subtype of high-grade glioma that almost exclusively occurs in children, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), is the last incurable childhood cancer, with zero percent long-term survivors. As the Luke's Army Pediatric Cancer Research Fund St. Baldrick's Scholar, Dr. Green and his team intend to address these tumors by focusing on a new field of cancer treatment called epigenetics, which literally means "above genetics" and refers to all changes to DNA that do not involve changes to the DNA sequence itself, but instead affect which genes are made into protein. Through prior work, Dr. Green's team has found a gene, BPTF, which controls the expression of many other genes and appears to drive HGG and DIPG growth. Dr. Green aims to determine how exactly BPTF drives growth by interacting with other genes, to measure how BPTF inhibition works with drugs called HDAC inhibitors and whether this strategy could work with current standard treatments, and to measure the effect of a new chemical that inhibits BPTF that could serve as a precursor to medicines targeting BPTF.

This grant is funded by and named for Luke's Army Pediatric Cancer Research Fund. This Hero Fund was created in memory of Luke Ungerer who brought smiles and sunshine wherever he went with plenty to share with everyone. He battled a brain tumor with a positive spirit and inspired others with his courage in his short life. This fund intends to carry on Luke’s legacy of positivity with the hope that it will ripple across many lives for many years to come.