Grants Search Results

Children and adolescents with cancer and their families are at increased risk for psychosocial problems that can contribute to poorer health and quality of life, and it has been recommended that pediatric cancer centers develop programs to screen patients and families for psychosocial risk. The majority of pediatric cancers centers do not have practices in place to effectively and routinely screen all patients and families for psychosocial difficulties, with time and resources being acknowledged as barriers to implementation. Dr. Gilleland Marchak is developing a novel, patient-friendly technology to screen for psychosocial risk and evaluating its use at a large pediatric cancer center. Study outcomes will include data related to feasibility and acceptability of electronic screening, as well as efficacy in identifying families in distress and connecting them with family support team members to address problems in real time. By successfully leveraging technology to reduce barriers to universal psychosocial screening, we can improve communication between oncology providers and families regarding critical mental health, neurocognitive, and social issues that may negatively impact pediatric cancer treatment and health outcomes.

Cancer-related pain greatly compromises quality of life, and can increase disease morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs by reducing children's compliance to medical procedures. The burden of cancer-related pain does not end when treatment concludes: many survivors of childhood cancer report cancer-related pain well into adulthood. Thus, there is a critical need for interventions that can reduce pain during and after children's treatments for cancer. Dr. Marusak is testing whether a martial arts therapy that centers around mindful breathing and meditative techniques can reduce pain and the underlying brain mechanisms in young cancer patients and survivors.

The survival rates of pediatric cancers have dramatically improved over the past 40 years due to aggressive treatment regimens, which have side effects. Anthracyclines are one class of chemotherapy drugs that have been used to treat more than 190,000 childhood cancer survivors but cause risk of cardiovascular disease. Connecticut Children's team of oncologists, cardiologists and endocrinologists has developed a clinical practice guidelines to prevent and recognize early cardiovascular disease in pediatric cancer survivors. Dr. Orsey is testing their scoring system among childhood cancer patients from a database and in the clinic. She anticipates that the scoring system will allow doctors to standardize the way they treat patients so that cardiovascular disease is prevented or recognized and treated early in order to decrease heart disease in childhood cancer survivors.

Children treated for leukemia often have difficulty with school and learning. These children are also known to report sleep disturbances. With the MaxLove Project Fund St. Baldrick's Supportive Care Research Grant, Dr. Ruble is measuring sleep with a home monitor, and testing survivors for specific learning difficulties. She will then examine the relationship between sleep and cognitive function in this population. Dr. Ruble hopes in the future that this will allow researchers to design treatments for sleep disturbances that will ultimately help with learning and school.

The MaxLove Project Fund honors the survivorship journey of Max Wilford who was diagnosed with a brain stem tumor at the age of four. Despite several surgeries and an intense treatment protocol, Max is now able to be a “regular” kid due in large part to integrative therapies he received.

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.

Our immune system has a remarkable ability to eradicate a vast array of foreign invaders. With increasing knowledge of this remarkable organ system, we can now begin to manipulate our immune system to fight cancer with remarkable precision and efficacy. However; tumor cells adopt multiple ways to reduce the immunotherapy efficacy, especially for solid tumors. Dr. Huang's research program systematically studies ways by which cancer cells evade immune cell detection and his goal is to develop a comprehensive, multi-pronged approach to increase the overall effectiveness of immunotherapy, particularly in pediatric and adolescent and young adult brain tumors and solid tumors.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Mulama was awarded a new grant in 2020 to fund an additional year of this Scholar grant. Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus is a virus that causes cancer known as Kaposi sarcoma, which is very common in HIV+ children, especially in Africa and sometimes in individuals who get an organ transplant. Dr. Mulama is designing and testing a vaccine that prevents and treats the viral infection, as well as antibodies to detect infection in people. He will also test the vaccine so that one day it can be used as a treatment to prevent Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infection and Kaposi sarcoma in more than 40,000 patients worldwide each year.

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 grant funds a medical student 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 an undergraduate student 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 medical student 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 medical student 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 an undergraduate student 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 an undergraduate student 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 an undergraduate student 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 medical student 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 medical student 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 an undergraduate student 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 two undergraduate 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.