Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Mentor: Dr. Elliot Stieglitz

Fusion-negative sarcomas are a diverse and understudied subset of pediatric cancers. The most prevalent are embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma (ERMS) and osteosarcoma (OS). Osteosarcoma is characterized by an abnormal genome with many alterations, most of which are called “copy number gains” or “copy number losses.” In a normal genome, there are only two copies of every gene. However, in OS many genes have more than 4 copies, sometimes even 10 or more copies.

Background

Pediatric brain tumors are the leading cause of childhood cancer death, with gliomas being the most common diagnoses. The drugs that are currently used to treat this target BRAFV600E mutation, found in a subset of glioma cancers and causes aberrant cell signaling. Previous studies, however, have shown that monotherapy against the BRAF600E mutation leads to feedback activation of other cellular pathways known the increase tumor proliferation, and ultimately build resistance against BRAFV600E targeted treatment.

Background

Background

Cancer takes the lives of more children than any other disease and leukemia is the most common type of childhood cancer. African-American children with leukemia die more often than children of other races with leukemia. The reasons for this difference between African-American and Caucasian children are unknown. While there are many possible causes of this difference, we have found in previous research that African-American children come to the hospital sicker than Caucasian children prior to the start of chemotherapy.