Curing Kids Cancer Grants $1.6 Million to Research

Curing Kids Cancer announced the 2017 recipients of $1.6 million in grants that will fund innovative therapies at 20 hospitals across the United States. This is the most funding Curing Kids Cancer has awarded.

Top Three Grants

Three doctors received $150,000 grants for each of their exceptional research projects. These projects focus on cancer immunotherapy, high-grade brain tumors and the use of virotherapy. The recipients are Dana Farber Cancer Center’s Dr. Carl Novina, Dr. Christine Brown from City of Hope in California and Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Dr. Timothy Cripe.

“I am thrilled that the medical knowledge, the technology and the genetics are coming together. We are beginning to fund the development of cures in our lifetime,” said Curing Kids Cancer Founder and President, Grainne Owen.

Curing Kids Cancer has funded cutting-edge childhood cancer research and treatments across the country for the last 12 years but this is the most projects the nonprofit has funded. These are the outstanding grant recipients:

Continued Funding

• University of Texas Southwestern’s Dr. Jim Amatruda and Dr. Kimberly Stegmaier from Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston received grants to collaborate on their research regarding Ewing sarcoma.
• Dr. Wainwright at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago will continue his research on brain tumors and new ways to treat them.
• Dr. Rajeev Vibhakar from Children’s Hospital Colorado received funding for his research on DIPG, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, using targeted therapies.
• Seattle Children’s Hospital received a grant for Dr. Todd Cooper’s research on high-risk leukemia.
• Dr. Meryam Fouladi at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital will continue to lead the international brain tumor consortium, which brings doctors from across the globe together to learn more about childhood brain cancers.
• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Dr. Stephan Grupp, who helped pioneer the recently FDA approved CAR T-cell therapy, is now working to on dual targeting protein DC19 and CD22 which are both present in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).
• Dr. Jamie Renbarger from Riley Children’s Health in Indianapolis is looking further into how genes affect childhood cancers. Her focus is on precision genomics in pediatric osteosarcomas.
• Dr. Keith August will continue his work on next-generation single cell sequencing in T-cell ALL at Mercy Children’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo.
• Dr. Justin Farge at Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Ky. has focused his research on identifying and targeting immunotherapeutic resistance in childhood cancers.

First-Time Recipients

Curing Kids Cancer is excited to announce Nemours Children’s Hospital, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Medical University of South Carolina, City of Hope, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and Children’s National Medical Center as first-time grant recipients.

Endowments

Curing Kids Cancer is working to complete its $1.2 million endowment at Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital in Columbia, S.C. When completed, the clinic will be named the Gamecocks Curing Kids Cancer Clinic. This will bring cutting edge therapies that are desperately needed for children in South Carolina.

The $1.5 million endowment with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is underway and will fund leukemia research led by Dr. Alan Wayne. The Cancer Center for Blood Diseases research program brings together a team of investigators who work to apply the latest laboratory discoveries to the development of new practical therapies.

Curing Kids Cancer is funding the development of the Cellular Therapy Lab, which is being developed by Dr. Douglas Graham at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. When the funding is completed it will be named the Killian Owen Curing Kids Cancer Cellular Therapy Lab. The main goal of the Killian Owen Curing Kids Cancer Cellular Therapy Lab is to translate gene therapy technology into clinical trials for cancer therapy. This will help with treating cancers like neuroblastoma, brain tumors and T cell leukemia.

Dr. Jade Wulff at Texas Children’s Hospital is the Curing Kids Cancer scholar. She will be one of only twelve doctors in the US trained to understand the pharmacology of childhood cancer, which studies the way new drugs work for children suffering from cancer.

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About Curing Kids Cancer:

Grainne and Clay Owen founded Curing Kids Cancer, a 501(c) devoted to funding cutting edge pediatric cancer therapies, after they lost their nine-year-old son, Killian, to leukemia in 2003. Since it was founded in 2005, Curing Kids Cancer has raised more than $11 million to fund new childhood cancer treatments and pediatric cancer research. For more information on how to help, please contact Curing Kids Cancer at 1-866-933-CURE (2873) or visit curingkidscancer.org to learn more.