April 15, 2013
Dream Team of Researchers Set to Begin Creation of New Immunotherapies to Cure Childhood Cancers
The “dream team” of researchers from seven different institutions who were awarded the $14.5 million shared grant from St. Baldrick’s Foundation and Stand Up 2 Cancer (SU2C), will begin their research in less than three months to develop new targeted immunotherapies to help cure childhood cancers.
The funds from the grant will be awarded over a four year period to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA), the Pediatric Branch of The National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, MD), the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX), the Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, Canada), Seattle Children’s Research Institute (Seattle, WA) and the University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI).
Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) members, Dr. Crystal Mackall, Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Dr. Paul Sondel, Professor of Pediatrics, Human Oncology and Genetics at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, are involved as leaders in this effort. Dr. Mackall is a co-leader of the entire team, along with Dr. John M. Maris, Director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Due to the policies of St. Baldrick’s foundation and SU2C, none of the philanthropic funds will go to the NCI, but the NCI will contribute funds directly to their investigators to support the effort.
“We are at a crossroads in our quest to conquer childhood cancer,” Dr. Mackall said. “This team will bring together leading investigators in the two most promising scientific disciplines in childhood cancer today: genomics and immunotherapeutics, to revolutionize treatment.”
Because the fields of cancer genomics and immunotherapy have developed independently, with relatively little cross-fertilization, the grant’s purpose is to bridge those gaps and in turn, increase survival rates for children diagnosed with some of the most difficult to treat cancers including high-risk leukemias and solid tumors such as medulloblastoma, glioblastoma, neuroblastoma, and sarcomas.
“The traditional treatment options such as chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, that previously drove up cure rates in children with cancer, have since reached a plateau,” Dr. Sondel, said. “Immunotherapy is continuing to emerge in the field; for example in patients with neuroblastoma, our Children’s Oncology Group Trial showed that immunotherapy improved the two-year event-free survival rate from 44% to 66%.”
For more information on the grant, visit: www.stbaldricks.org/blog/post/dream-team-announced.
Submit your research to The Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, the official journal of SITC! The Society is pleased to offer SITC members waived article processing charges for manuscripts accepted through 2013. For more information, visit: http://www.sitcancer.org/journal
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