Background Primary CNS tumors are the most common pediatric solid cancer, and account for 23% of malignancy in children under 15 years of age, second only to leukemia. The incidence of newly diagnosed brain tumors in the pediatric population is 3.3 cases per 100,000 children, with 3,000 children diagnosed annually. Brain tumors are also the …
PI: Lionel Chow, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center Summary report, grand duration 2011-2013 Children who develop high-grade glioma (HGG) have a very poor prognosis. New and more effective treatment options are desperately needed to improve patient survival and quality of life. In order to better understand how these tumors grow, we are looking at a …
Eric Raabe MD, PhD One of the goals of pediatric cancer treatment is deploying personalized medicine. Treating each patient and each tumor, with exactly the right type of therapy to maximize killing of tumor cells and minimize side effects to patients is the objective. Initially, brain tumors were classified by their appearance under the microscope. …
Medulloblastoma is the most common primary malignant central nervous system tumor arising in childhood. Survival rates for children with medulloblastomas have nearly doubled and so has the recognition that many survivors are impaired and new forms of treatment are needed. Its understanding and management represents both the progress and challenges involved in the treatment of …
Chuck Stiles, M.D. November 2010, Summary With the generous support of the Childhood Brain Tumor Foundation, the laboratory of Dr. Charles Stiles at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has developed pre-clinical models for testing drugs that target the PI3K signaling pathway. We have evidence that the PI3K signaling pathway may be mutated in some juvenile pilocytic astrocytomas. We …
Chin Chiang, M.D. Second-year funding 2010-2011 Medulloblastoma, the most common pediatric solid tumor, is characterized by its rapid progression and tendency to spread along the entire brain-spinal axis with poor clinical outcome. We have generated a novel mouse model of medulloblastoma by constitutively activating Shh signaling in the Gdf7-lineage. Previous studies have shown that Gdf7-expressing …
The Childhood Brain Tumor Foundation was delighted to be a silver sponsor of the ISPNO, held from June 20 through June 23, 2010, in Vienna, Austria. The ISPNO is held every two years alternating in and out of the United States. This important meeting brings together basic scientists, translational researcher, clinicians, and other medical professionals …
Africa Fernandez, Ph.D., Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center first year funding, 2010 – 2011 Medulloblastomas are brain tumors arising in the cerebellum, and they are the most common kind of solid tumor of childhood. Current treatments for these tumors leave patients with life-long damage, since the treatments affect the still-developing brain. Identifying therapies that attack the …
Philip Beachy, Ph.D. and Michelle Monje, M.D. 2010-2011 funding Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is a devastating childhood brain tumor that is poorly understood and universally fatal. Progress to date has been limited by a lack of faithful experimental model systems. We have overcome this impasse by generating new DIPG cell lines and xenograft model …
