Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Background

Dr. Jun Yang's laboratory at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has recently identified a panel of rare genetic variants in ETV6, some of which strongly influence familial predisposition to acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of childhood cancer. While Dr. Yang's findings point to ETV6 as a critical ALL risk gene, the exact effects of each genetic variant on leukemia predisposition are unclear and there is an urgent need to determine the functional consequences of these alleles in the context of leukemogenesis.

Cure rates of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have improved dramatically in the past decades. However, in 15-20% of children with ALL, the leukemia comes back after therapy and most children who relapse eventually succumb to the disease. Relapsed ALL is in fact one of the leading cause of death in children with cancer. Most importantly, ALL relapse is significantly more frequent in Hispanic children compared to Caucasians, and the underlying causes are largely unknown.