Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer. T cell ALL is an especially aggressive subtype of ALL which affects up to 20% of children with ALL. Up to 25% of children with T-ALL will relapse and succumb to chemotherapy resistant disease. Leukemia survivors experience long-term side effects that permanently affect their quality of life, both physically and mentally. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop targeted therapies to not only improve survival but reduce long-term side affects associated with current treatments.

Lay Summary: Brain cancer is the most common cancer in children. While treatments with chemotherapy and radiation can be effective initially, brain tumors often come back and are resistant to further treatment. To understand what happens at the cellular level between initial diagnosis and cancer recurrence, we will study these cells at both timepoints. While past research has focused primarily on cancer cells, we will also study the non-cancerous cells that inhabit brain tumors that may contribute ingredients that cancer cells need to grow.