Alix Seif, MD, MPH, an attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is two decades into her career as a leading childhood leukemia researcher, but her journey into unlocking the potential of immunotherapy was fate from the start. During her first year of oncology fellowship, her very first patient was a young baby with relapsed acute myeloid leukemia. He was waiting for new treatment ideas after frontline therapies had failed. Then, he developed an infection, one that could’ve been life-threatening. Instead... Read More
The Childhood Cancer Blog
Welcome to The Childhood Cancer Blog
from Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation!
Alix Seif, MD, MPH, an attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and ALSF Grantee
Austin was diagnosed with leukemia just before his third birthday. Austin had his first CAR T treatment in October 2013. Today, he is 14 years old and a typical teen boy.
Before CAR T immunotherapy was approved by the FDA, it was Stephan Grupp, MD/PhD from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who delivered the first CAR T treatment to a patient — Emily Whitehead.
In 2017, the FDA approved CAR T cell immunotherapy as a treatment for children with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who have relapsed or didn’t respond to standard regimens.
CAR T cell immunotherapy makes use of a patient’s own immune cells, which are genetically modified to seek out and kill cancer cells.
But before CAR T immunotherapy was approved by the FDA, it was Stephan Grupp, MD/PhD from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) who delivered the... Read More
As the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) Director of Science, I work to evaluate our funded research projects to track progress and find gaps in funding so that we can direct more research dollars to the largest areas of need, and to understand the challenges researchers face on a day-to-day basis. I am so excited about where the field of childhood cancer research is going, and I look forward to sharing breakthroughs more often.
Each quarter, I will highlight a few research projects that I think are both interesting and impactful. ALSF has funded more than 1,000 research... Read More
