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. 

Background

Sarcomas are tumors of the bone and soft tissues that comprise up to 20% of cancer diagnoses in children. Despite dismal outcomes for patients with recurrent or metastatic disease, treatment regimens consisting of intense non-specific chemotherapy combined with surgery or radiation remain largely unchanged for decades. 

Background 

Ewing’s sarcoma is an aggressive pediatric bone tumor characterized by the EWS/FLI fusion gene. While advances in multimodal therapy have raised disease-free survival rates above 70% for patients with localized disease, survival rates for in metastatic and refractory cases remain stuck below 30%. We need better therapeutic strategies for these patients. EWS/FLI remains challenging to treat with drugs directly and sequencing of patient tumors failed to identify additional drug-treatable mutations common across patients. 

Background

Background