On Continuing Quest To Find A Cure For Childhood Cancer, ALSF Announces 2012 Grant Recipients

Foundation awards $4 million to doctors and researchers searching for treatments and cures for kids with cancer; Foundation plans to award over $10 million in 2012

PHILADELPHIA, PA (June 2012) – Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), a nonprofit dedicated to finding cures for all kids with cancer, has announced the awarding of over $4 million in new medical research grants in the first cycle of 2012. The grants will extend to doctors and researchers, as well as medical and graduate students, at 34 institutions and universities in 19 states across the country, totaling 48 new grants. Throughout the course of the year, the Foundation plans to release over $10 million in research funding.

Following in the footsteps of Foundation creator, Alexandra “Alex” Scott, who insisted that “all children want their tumors to go away,” Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation strives to fund research projects that focus on all types of childhood cancers, not just the type that Alex had. Within the scope of the 2012 pediatric oncology grants are projects focusing on: brain tumors Ewing’s sarcoma, germ cell tumors, gliomas, hepatoblastoma, leukemias, neuroblastoma, osteosarcoma, and rhabdomyosarcoma.

The current grant cycle released awards in four categories: Innovation, Young Investigator and Epidemiology to doctors and researchers, and Pediatric Oncology Student Training (POST) awards to medical and graduate students. Beginning in 2011, along with awarding grants to doctors, nurses and researchers at leading institutions, the Foundation began providing awards to medical and graduate students with an interest in childhood cancer research. The students continue their work in the laboratory over the summer with a mentor to further their interest in the field.

“It has always been our goal to find better treatments and cures for all kids with cancer by funding the best research available,” said Jay Scott, Co-Executive Director of the Foundation. “Just recently, we were thrilled to learn that Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation had played a major role in the initial funding of a project which led to a clinical trial with great success in treating an aggressive type of lymphoma; this only reignited our desire to fund research, providing us with the proof that we are on the right track.”

“This award will provide critical support for my newly formed laboratory to begin the search for novel drugs that can be combined with radiation therapy for the treatment of pediatric gliomas,” said Ranjit Bindra, M.D., Ph.D., a Young Investigator Awardee from Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. “This funding will allow me to establish a novel research platform that can be applied to numerous other pediatric tumors in the future.”

This grant cycle focuses on four types of grants:

• Innovation Awards providing critical and significant seed funding designed for experienced investigators with a novel and promising approach to finding causes and cures for childhood cancers.
• Epidemiology Awards designed to support the research of investigators who have a specific focus on the epidemiology of childhood cancer, early detection of childhood cancer or the prevention of childhood cancer.
• Young Investigator Awards designed to fill the critical need for start up funds for new researchers and physicians to pursue promising research ideas.

• Pediatric Oncology Student Training (POST) designed to enable medical and graduate students to gain experience in the lab of an established researcher in the field of pediatric oncology over the summer months.

(A complete list of grant recipients can be found below)

Believing that quality of care and life for childhood cancer patients can be equally integral to their treatment and survival, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation also funds the research of nurses. The Foundation is now accepting applications for Nurse Researcher Grants.

Research funded by ALSF has been featured in The New England Journal of Medicine, Blood, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Molecular Therapy, AACR Journal, Oncogene, Nature and more.

In addition to the first round of grants, the Foundation will begin accepting applications for the ‘A’ Award and Bridge Grants on July 2. Bridge Grants were introduced earlier this year and are intended to keep scientist’s projects on track while they reapply for funding from the National Institutes of Health to ensure novel childhood cancer research projects are not compromised. For more information on the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation grant programs, visit ALSFgrants.org

Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation 2012 Grant Recipients

Innovation Awards 2012

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD

Donald Small, M.D., Ph.D.

Development of the next generation FLT3 inhibitors for pediatric AML and infant ALL

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA

Wolfram Goessling, M.D., Ph.D.

The role of vitamin D in hepatoblastoma formation and prevention

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA

Stuart Orkin, M.D.

Searching for genetic vulnerabilities in osteosarcoma through genome-wide RNA screening

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA

David Pellman, M.D.

Identification and validation of new therapeutic targets in pediatric leukemia through an aneuploidy-based synthetic lethality screen

CASE Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH

Alex Huang, M.D., Ph.D.

Developing immunemodulatory strategies against primary and metastatic tumors in the central nervous system

Children’s Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH

Jiayuh Lin, Ph.D.

Novel STAT3 drug development for childhood osteosarcoma therapy using drug repositioning

Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX

Margaret Goodell, Ph.D.

Mechanisms of LYL1-associated T-ALL development

Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX

Leonid Metelitsa, M.D., Ph.D.

V alpha-invariant NKT cells as a novel platform for cancer immunotherapy

University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA

David Traver, Ph.D.

Modeling pediatric leukemia in the Zebrafish to enable discovery of new anti-leukemic compounds

University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL

David Robbins, Ph.D.

Casein kinase 1 alpha agonists as novel medulloblastoma inhibitors

Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN

Chin Chiang, Ph.D.

A novel mouse model of rhabdomyosarcoma

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY

Marcel van den Brink, M.D., Ph.D.

Targeting neovascularization in graft-versus-host disease

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

Andrei Thomas-Tikhonenko, Ph.D.

In-UTR mutations in neuroblastoma: functional consequences and therapeutic implications

Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, UT

Lisa Cannon-Albright, Ph.D.

Identification of predisposition genes for Ewing’s sarcoma segregating high-risk pedigrees

Young Investigator Awards 2012

Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston, MA

John Powers, Ph.D.

Investigating the role of the RNA binding protein LIN28 in neuroblastoma

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA

Julia Etchin, Ph.D.

Selective inhibition of nuclear export as a novel therapeutic strategy in AML

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA

Jennifer Wu, M.D., Ph.D.

SWI/SNF complex and glucocorticoid resistance in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
Alexandros Tzatsos, M.D., Ph.D.

Epigenetic regulation of self-renewal pathways in hematopoietic and leukemic stem cells

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX

Kathleen Galindo, Ph.D.

Screening for new rhabdomyosarcoma pathogenesis genes in a Drosophila model

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

Chen Ling, Ph.D.

Treatment for human hepatoblastoma based on recombinant adeno-associated virus vectors

Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX

Meenakshi Hegde, M.D., Ph.D.

Adoptive cell therapy targeting antigen escape variants in childhood high grade gliomas

University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA

Paolo Abada, M.D., Ph.D.

Determinants of testicular germ cell tumor platinum sensitivity and resistance

University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

Mario Otto, M.D., Ph.D.

Development of an innovative treatment strategy for neuroblastoma and other pediatric tumors

Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

Sean Landrette, Ph.D.

Identifying therapeutic targets for MiT associated pediatric cancers

Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

Ranjit Bindra, M.D., Ph.D.

Small-molecule screening for novel pediatric glioma radiosensitizers

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

Sarah Tasian, M.D.

Development of targeted therapies in high risk childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Monalisa Mukerjea, Ph.D.

Role of myosin VI in pediatric glioma proliferation and invasion

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA

Fabiana Ostronoff, M.D.

Transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) for identification of novel markers of disease outcome and therapeutic targets in acute myeloid leukemia

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA

Phoenix Ho, M.D.

Exploiting WT1 genomic alterations for target identification and MRD monitoring in pediatric AML

Epidemiology Awards 2012

Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN

Terry Vik, M.D.

Childhood leukemia in Kenya identified through malaria slide review

Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, UT

Joshua Schiffman, M.D.

Comprehensive analysis of risk factors for pediatric cancers using the Utah Population Database

Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Kimberly Johnson, Ph.D.

Neurofibromatosis type 1 as a model population for pediatric brain cancer prevention and control research

POST Program Awards 2012

University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Jennifer Lee

Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD

Claire Semerjian

University of California, Davis School of Medicine, Davis, CA

Marin Nishimura

Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC

Tingyu Liu

Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA

Shannalee Martinez

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

Baweja Abinav

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Jessica Trimis

University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

Mallery Olsen

Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY

AnneMarie Laurri

New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ

Kevin Shahbahrami

University of Central Florida School of Medicine, Orlando, FL

Wan Xing Hong

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Nicole Herbst

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Nathan Singh

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

James Webb

Toronto Western Research Institute, Toronto, ON

Matthew Mistry