Grants Search Results

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.

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.

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.

Many cancer treatments kill both normal and cancer cells. Drugs used in standard cancer treatments have long term effects in children, such as causing developmental delays or second cancers later in life. Dr. Blackburn's team is working to find new drugs that kill cancer cells, but do not affect normal cells. By discovering characteristics that are unique to cancer and finding a drug that recognizes that specific characteristic, they will be able to selectively kill cancer cells. Their research goal is to improve cancer treatments so that children can live long, normal lives after their cancer is cured.

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.

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.

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.

Neurons are nerve cells that populate certain regions of the human body and are responsible for transmitting chemical signals back and forth to the brain to regulate critical bodily functions. A deadly form of pediatric cancer, known as neuroblastoma, occurs when a subset of these neurons start to proliferate uncontrollably. These cancer cells can migrate and spread throughout the body, making it very challenging to treat with currently available drugs. This highly aggressive form of neuroblastoma occurs in children who are older than 18 months. At such an early age, this disease can be quite devastating and there is an imperative need to better understand how this form of neuroblastoma develops. Recent work has identified pediatric cancer mutations in distinct specialized proteins that regulate chromatin (the complex of DNA and proteins), known as chromatin remodelers. One such protein, ATRX, was recently found to be mutated frequently in neuroblastoma tumors identified in adolescent and young adults, which have poor overall survival. Dr. Bernstein is exploring a novel therapy for neuroblastoma patients that harbor ATRX mutations thorough innovative and state-of-the-art approaches. Dr. Bernstein's team is comparing the cellular changes that occur in the presence of the drug in models of neuroblastoma.

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.

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.

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.