Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Brain tumors are the second most common childhood cancer and the primary cause of cancer-related death. Diffuse Midline Gliomas (DMG) account for 10% of them and have less than 1% survival at five years. Because of the nature and location of the tumor, surgical removal is not an option, and the standard therapy is radiation, with a short-lived response.

Diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs) are inoperable, lethal, high-grade central nervous system cancers primarily affecting children and young adults. We discovered that DMGs, which are characterized by the presence of a specific mutation called H3K27M+, exhibit high levels of a signal called GD2 and that immune cells engineered to recognize this signal called chimeric antigen receptor T cells (GD2-CAR T cells) mediate impressive antitumor effects in numerous patient-derived mouse models of DMG, including spinal cord DMG.