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Innovation Grants

These grants are designed to provide critical and significant seed funding for experienced investigators with a novel and promising approach to finding causes and cures for childhood cancers. A Letter of Intent is required. The Innovation Award amount totals $250,000 over two years. The Award may not be renewed, however, one no cost extensions are allowable.

Targeting EZHIP as a therapeutic strategy for infantile ependymomas

Posterior fossa group A (PFA) ependymomas are an especially clinically challenging type of brain tumor that occurs in young children. In order to develop new treatments to combat these tumors, we first need to understand the molecular pathways that drive the cells to grow. Recent work from our group and others found that nearly all PFA ependymoma tumors have abnormally high levels of a protein that we named EZHIP. Normally, the EZHIP gene is only turned on in cells that make up part of the testes and ovaries.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Peter Lewis, PhD

Project Title: 

Targeting EZHIP as a therapeutic strategy for infantile ependymomas

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Hematopoietic stem cell function in familial platelet disorder therapy

Genetic studies have identified a number of genes that when mutated predispose individuals to blood cancers. In addition, these mutations can promote other health complications throughout their lifetime. For example, children that inherit a mutation in the gene RUNX1 have Familial Platelet Disorder, they live with bleeding problems and, in many cases, autoimmune complications. In addition, affected children have a high incidence of blood cancer during their childhood or later in life. Currently, there are not effective therapies to prevent the development of blood cancer.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Lucio Castilla, PhD

Project Title: 

Hematopoietic stem cell function in familial platelet disorder therapy

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Unraveling metabolic dependencies in childhood supratentorial ependymomas.

Childhood ependymomas are devastating tumors with limited treatment options. A subset of these tumors occur in the upper portion of the brain. About 70% of these tumors bear an abnormal protein termed C11orf95-RELA. Our goal is to determine how this abnormal protein causes cancer and use this knowledge to treat these deadly tumors. We have discovered that ependymoma tumor cells with the C11orf95-RELA protein are addicted to the amino acid glutamine.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Sriram Venneti, MD/PhD

Project Title: 

Unraveling metabolic dependencies in childhood supratentorial ependymomas.

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Role of H3.3-G34R mutation in pediatric high-grade glioma

Pediatric brain tumors are the most common solid tumors in children, with approximately 5,000 new cases diagnosed per year in the United States. Around 17% of brain tumors in children age 0–14 years are pediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGGs). pHGG is the most lethal cancer in children; the median survival duration of children with HGG is only 12–15 months despite aggressive therapy.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Jian Hu, PhD

Project Title: 

Role of H3.3-G34R mutation in pediatric high-grade glioma

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Phosphopeptides as shared targets for donor derived T cell therapy of AML

Acute myelogeneous leukemia (AML) remains a therapeutic dilemma both for children and adults with long-term cure rates still only 50-70%, even after a tissue type-matched bone marrow transplant.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Richard O'Reilly, MD

Project Title: 

Phosphopeptides as shared targets for donor derived T cell therapy of AML

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

A leukemia organoid platform for dissection and targeting of tumor-niche interactions

Progress in the treatment of childhood leukemia has been curtailed by the limited success of drugs tested in immortal leukemia cells, which after years of culture in the laboratory have lost much of the properties characteristic of the original tumor that they were derived from. The expansion of patient leukemia cells in specialized mice offers an improved alternative for identification of new effective drugs, but this approach is cumbersome and slow limiting its broad applicability.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Adolfo Ferrando, MD/PhD

Project Title: 

A leukemia organoid platform for dissection and targeting of tumor-niche interactions

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Targeting tumor associated macrophages in metastatic Ewing sarcoma (ES)

Ewing sarcoma (ES) is a malignant tumor arising from bone and soft tissue in children, adolescents, and young adults (CAYA). Most ES patients already have tumor cells spread (metastasis) to other organs such as lung and bone at the time of diagnosis. Despite the intensive treatment including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, only approximately one out of four patients with metastatic ES will survive 5 years. More effective and new therapeutic approaches are desperately needed to improve survival of these patients.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Mitchell Cairo, MD

Project Title: 

Targeting tumor associated macrophages in metastatic Ewing sarcoma (ES)

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Loss of ER-mitochondria contacts drives therapy resistance in neuroblastoma

Many high-risk childhood cancers are lethal because they become resistant to available treatments. The paradox is that these cancers endure the most stress of any cells of the body: growing where nutrients are scarce and spreading to inhospitable body parts all create stress signals that ought to kill the cancer cells. Further, the treatments we give are chosen for their potency at causing more stress. Work from our lab shows that these cancers don’t survive because they can’t create stress signals, they survive because they develop ways to keep the stress signals from killing them.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Michael Hogarty, MD

Project Title: 

Loss of ER-mitochondria contacts drives therapy resistance in neuroblastoma

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Choline Kinase and Alkylating Agent Resistance in Refractory Childhood Leukemias

Alkylating agents are a class of chemotherapeutics important for children with high-risk or relapsed leukemias. These are given during what we call conditioning regimens just before bone marrow transplantation (BMT). The goal of conditioning regimens is to eliminate all leukemia cells, before the bone marrow is replaced by BMT. However, the failure of these conditioning regimens to ablate all leukemia cells is a major problem that leads to relapse after BMT. Leukemic relapse is the most common cause of treatment failure of BMT regimens, and these patients have a very poor prognosis.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Alejandro Gutierrez, MD

Project Title: 

Choline Kinase and Alkylating Agent Resistance in Refractory Childhood Leukemias

Year Awarded: 

2021

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

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