Grants Search Results

Rhabdomyosarcoma is a deadly cancer when spread through the body. With the Aiden's Army Fund St. Baldrick's Research Grant, Dr. Li is combining drugs already FDA approved for adult cancers in a way that stops rhabdomyosarcoma tumor cells from creating new tumors elsewhere in the body. This approach is unique because Dr. Li not only aims to stop the tumor cells from growing, but will try to convert what is left to non-cancerous cells similar to what is found in normal muscle.

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 institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) Consortium. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.

Rhabdomyosarcoma is a pediatric cancer of the developing skeletal muscle. The mechanisms that drive this tumor are poorly understood. From Dr. McEvoy's preliminary analysis, one possible mechanism is epigenetic deregulation of a group of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA). This is exciting because lncRNAs play a role in tumorigenesis in other cancer types, including a subset of pediatric tumors. This presents a unique opportunity to develop novel therapeutic approaches for children with rhabdomyosarcoma. Dr. McEvoy's team hypothesizes that lncRNA deregulation is essential for rhabdomyosarcoma development. This study is working to understand the underlying mechanisms that drive this disease and identify potential new therapies. These results will have tremendous impact on patients, especially those with metastatic disease since only 20-40% will survive using current treatments.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) Consortium. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.

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.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) Consortium. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.

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.

Survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) may have difficulty learning because of problems with attention and working memory caused by the medications they receive during the course of their leukemia treatment. The Georgia and the Peachy Keens St. Baldrick's Supportive Care Research Grant is determining if children would be willing to complete 25 computer-based training sessions (designed as games) over an 8-week period, at home, while they are taking oral chemotherapy medications. These computer games are designed to improve attention and working memory. If this study proves that children are willing to complete the training and participate in short (10- to 15-minute) evaluations of their attention and memory, Dr. Winick will then test this intervention with a larger number of children to see how well it works and how long any effects last.

This grant is named for the Georgia and the Peachy Keens Hero Fund which was created in honor of Georgia Moore’s 5th year past her cancer diagnosis. As a leukemia survivor, she inspires others to “just keep swimming” by raising awareness, hope and research dollars.

The goal of this study is to develop new therapies for Ewing sarcoma by targeting a protein called EWS-FLI1. Many people believe that the key to improving outcomes for Ewing sarcoma patients is to develop new drugs that block EWS-FLI1. In order for this to be successful, there is a need to understand exactly what happens to the Ewing sarcoma cell when EWS-FLI1 is turned off. Dr. Grohar is using the latest technology to both characterize the consequence of EWS-FLI1 silencing and identify novel compounds that turn EWS-FLI1 off.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) Consortium. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.

Children with cancer continue to succumb to their disease, many after receiving toxic therapies like chemotherapy and radiation. Also, surviving children face life long negative health consequences ranging from learning disabilities, to more severe effects such as a higher chance of getting another cancer in adulthood. Therefore, additional, rigorous scientific research needs to be performed to develop new and effective treatment options for these kids. Cancer growing inside the body hides in plain sight of the immune system. This is because cancer cells evolve to escape recognition by the immune cells. Therefore reawakening the immune system could be a very effective way of using a patients' own attacker cells to engulf cancer cells and get rid of the disease. Dr. Davare is working to discover and test new ways to reactivate immune cells for attacking cancer cells. For this project, she has developed an innovative method to identify synthetic molecules that will uncloak the cancer cell and make it visible to the immune system for destruction. This research strategy, in the long run, will open new doors and has the potential to not only increase survival of children with cancer, but their long term quality of life as well.

This grant is named for Hannah’s Heroes, a St. Baldrick’s Hero Fund created in honor of Hannah Meeson and pays tribute to her fight by raising awareness and funding for all childhood cancers because kids like Hannah “are worth fighting for.”

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) Consortium. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.

Cancer is a genetic disease in which a cell learns to take advantage of certain processes that allow that cell to grow and survive unchecked. Bone cancer is an aggressive disease in both children and pet dogs that can be painful and often leads to death of the patient even with aggressive surgery and chemotherapy. Most often these patients die because the tumor has spread to other areas of the body, not from the original bone tumor, which is often removed with surgery. Therefore, in order to better battle this disease, new therapies that target the cells that spread are needed. Preliminary work with a new drug that targets this process has shown promise as just such a therapy. The goal of The Ben's Green Drakkoman St. Baldrick's Research Grant is to more thoroughly investigate this drug for its ability to prevent or delay spread of the tumor cells using both human and dog bone tumor cells.

This grant is named for the Ben's Green Drakkoman Fund, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund created to honor the memory of Ben Stowell who battled osteosarcoma with an inspiring determination to live life fully. The fund is named after a super hero Ben created named the Green Drakkoman who defeats his enemy, the Evil Alien.

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.

Cancer cells are hard to defeat because they are so similar to normal cells. Most current methods that kill cancer cells impose collateral damage on normal cells that lead to immune suppression, hair loss, and gastro-intestinal damage. Dr. Whitehurst's research focuses on identifying therapies that will only kill tumor cells but leave normal cells unharmed. Here, she is focused on a tumor type that impacts adolescents: Ewing Sarcoma. She has identified a pathway, called TNFa, which is “mis-wired” in these cancer cells. Instead of dying when this pathway is activated, the cancer cells keep growing. Importantly, she has identified inhibitors of the pathway that can kill these tumor cells. Dr. Whitehurst is working to understand how this pathway is mis-wired in cancer cells and the consequences of its inhibition. The end goal would be the identification of chemical inhibitors that could be used in the clinic as a less toxic and more effective treatment option.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Rowe was awarded a new grant in 2019 to fund an additional year of this Fellow award. Leukemia that develops in infants under one year of age is difficult to cure and has poor long-term outcomes compared to leukemia developing in older children or teenagers. The therapies used for infant leukemia are highly toxic with long-term adverse effects and are not particularly effective at curing the disease. To identify more tolerable and more effective treatments, we need better models to study infant leukemia in the laboratory. We could use such a model to identify the genes that drive infant leukemia and make it so aggressive and challenging to treat, and to develop drugs to target these genes. Dr. Rowe has developed a new model of infant leukemia and is using this system to identify the key genes that make this form of leukemia so aggressive.

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.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Pierro was awarded a new grant in 2019 to fund an additional year of this Fellow award. While outcomes for childhood leukemia have improved dramatically, the prognosis for children who relapse remains poor making relapsed leukemia one of the main causes of cancer death in children. Discovering the underlying pathways that lead to chemotherapy resistance and relapsed disease is therefore a top priority. To prevent relapse and improve treatment response, Dr. Pierro's laboratory has focused on discovering genetic mutations responsible for relapse and chemotherapy resistance. Mutations in a gene known as MMSET have been identified as one of the most common mutations in relapsed leukemia in children. This mutation in other cancers imparts a poor prognosis which suggests it has a role in drug resistance. Dr. Pierro's team has developed leukemia cell lines with and without the MMSET mutation and is treating the lines with chemotherapy to test this theory. He is also identifying the pathways controlled by this gene to identify the mechanism by which it protects the cells from the effects of chemotherapy. This information could be used to develop targeted therapy to prevent relapse and restore sensitivity to chemotherapy thereby improving outcomes.

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.

Brain tumors are the most common solid tumor in children, and diagnostic imaging guides almost every step in the care of children with brain tumors. However, currently available imaging methods have limited accuracy. Dr. McConathy is using an amino acid tagged with radioactivity (FET) to detect abnormal metabolism in tumor tissue using positron emission tomography (PET) in combination with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He expects this new imaging technique to improve the ability to see brain tumors before and after surgery to help doctors better plan the treatment of children with brain tumors. In the long term, Dr. McConathy expects FET-PET/MRI to help select and plan the best therapies and increase the chance of achieving cures.