Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Mentor Name: Robin Parihar

Mentor Name: Will Parsons

Despite attempts to improve treatment over the last few decades, children with advanced neuroblastoma or muscle or bone sarcoma continue to die from their disease. New treatments are sorely needed. Therapies that utilize the immune system to fight cancer, such as use of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells, have shown promise in the lab. Their ability to cure patients, however, has been limited by a powerful tumor environment that inhibits the immune system.

Mentor: Dr. Philip Lupo

In the United States, children fighting cancer rarely ever abandon care. Most will complete their cancer treatment. Many more children who get cancer in the United States survive. However, in poorer countries like Botswana and Malawi in Africa, many children with cancer do not finish treatment and die. In some countries in Africa, nearly half of children with cancer end up abandoning care. This is one of the reasons why most children with cancer in Africa die.