Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

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.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of cancer in children and remains a leading cause of cancer-related death. Most of these deaths occur due to relapse. The goal of our research is to identify cells that can cause relapse and understand what is distinct about cells capable of causing relapse to develop new targets for treatment. We have identified that cells associated with relapse use glucose (sugar) in a distinct way and without glucose, these cells cannot survive.