Alex's Lemonade Stand

About the The Lilly E. King Innovation Award 2006

The award will fund Dr. Ken Lucas' research project:
"Tumor cell hybridoma vaccine for recurrent neuroblastoma and Ewing's sarcoma"

Investigators have shown that tumor cells could be fused (hybridized) with other cells, known as antigen presenting cells (APC), and these cells could be used to vaccinate against tumors. This method of stimulating an immune response is ideal for neuroblastoma and Ewing's sarcoma, since tumor proteins have not been well characterized for these malignancies.

The investigators will perform a clinical study in pediatric patients with relapsed or therapy resistant neuroblastoma and Ewing's sarcoma, in which patient-derived tumor cells are hybridized to APC called B lymphoblastoid cell lines and then given back to the patient. Patients who show signs of an immune response to the vaccine will be eligible to have blood collected in order to grow tumor killing immune cells (called T cells), which could be given later intravenously. A second objective is to study better ways to hybridize these cells.

Click Here to learn more about Dr. Lucas' research

Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation is extremely pleased and honored to announce the Lilly E. King Innovation Award.

This generous research award was established by John and Deidre King in honor of their daughter, Lilly, a childhood cancer survivor. Please read below to learn more about this inspiring family who are making a difference for children with cancer.

Here is their story, in their own words...

Our Story: "Neuroblastoma is a bad childhood cancer that comes without warning. It’s not screened for and it does not run genetically in families. It has nothing to do with where you live or what you eat: out of the blue you get a bomb dropped on your family.

Our daughter Lilly was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma on 6/14/99, at 2 yrs., 2 mo. Her treatment was 5 rounds of very high dose chemo, a 12 hr. surgery, local radiation to the surgical site, aphaeresis to collect stem cells, two back to back stem cell transplants, the latter including total body radiation, and to follow up, a course of Accutane. That is the baseline treatment for stage IV, also called the DAT-34 protocol, which was the direct result of current medical research and state of the art.

She was treated at Children’s Hospital of Boston, and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, which was near our home. At the time our son was 8 yrs old. Now, in addition to Lilly and John we also have another daughter, Jessie, 4 yrs old.

More than 7 years later, Lilly is doing great!

Our history of fundraising: During treatment, one of our doctors told us that if there were the amount of money available for neuroblastoma research that there is for adult cancers, neuroblastoma would already be cured. Not to take anything away from the severity of adult cancers, but that was very difficult for us to hear.

The truth is that few have heard of this disease. Children in different parts of the US (as well as those in different countries of the world) get vastly different therapy, depending on where they go for treatment. Dollars are limited for research, patients are few in number, have had different baseline treatments, and so follow up trials are complicated and difficult to get enough numbers to be statistically significant. Even in today’s techno-savvy world, where new treatments seem to come in leaps and bounds, it takes 5 to 10 years for significant advances in this field.

When Lilly was undergoing treatment, it was the other children who had been through this treatment that gave us hope. We’ve dedicated ourselves to raising money to help children battle neuroblastoma, and through remaining involved, to do what we can to provide hope for others.

We first raised money soon after treatment for one of our Doctor’s Neuroblastoma related fund at the Dana Farber, and for Children’s hospital chemo floor, and for the Ronald McDonald house in Boston. We later donated to Dr. Paul Sondel of the University of Wisconsin, who was working on an immunotherapy for neuroblastoma patients. But we wanted to do more. Several of the families who had been through treatment at the Farber got together and made a contract with the Farber to start a Neuroblastoma Fellowship (if we could raise 1 million dollars, they would create a permanent translational research fellowship). We joined the families to do all the fundraisers at the Farber (the Pan Mass Challenge, the Marathon Run, the Marathon Walk, etc.). Together we raised over 3 million dollars and got three fellowships! Previously, there was no steady research being done at the Farber specifically for Neuroblastoma.

We have since focused our efforts on funding promising and innovative research projects. To this end, we’ve helped raise 400,000 for Dr. Judah Folkman to hire a full time researcher and fund a study involving early detection for relapsed Neuroblastoma, and angiogenesis therapy. And now, my family and I are starting the Lilly E. King Innovation Award at Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation.

Our goals with the Innovation Award: Our goal is to provide money for innovative studies which can help neuroblastoma patients. We wanted to pick a study which has shown promise in the lab and is close to being available for trials involving children. We didn’t want to fund pure research, many steps away from being available as treatment. We didn’t want to fund things that are already, in our opinion, out there and well covered. We want to find a cure. We do not want to fund a palliative study.

This year, we are proud to support the Tumor Cell Vaccine for Recurrent Neuroblastom and Ewings Sarcoma Research Project by Dr. Ken Lucas at Penn State University. It is an innovative idea. Also, they will be making it available to treat relapsed children. They needed money to get the ball rolling. We’re rooting for them!"