Grant Recipients

July 2009: ThinkCure! awarded $600,000 in grants for research at City of Hope and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. The one-year grants support research in the development of new therapies to treat brain tumors, gene therapy for lymphoma and a vaccine for leukemia. These are the first research-specific grants awarded by ThinkCure.

Two studies received $100,000 collaborative grants for researchers from both City of Hope and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. Four investigators were awarded $50,000 seed grants for early-stage research that may develop into promising new treatments. A peer-based panel of expert cancer researchers reviewed the grant applications. Grants were awarded to the most promising collaborative and leading-edge research projects.

The two collaborative grants will fund research focused on:

STAT-3 inhibitors: STAT-3 is a gene that is active in cancer tumors and enables tumor growth while turning off the body’s natural immune response. Hua Yu, Ph.D., professor of cancer immunotherapeutics and tumor immunology at City of Hope, and Robert Seeger, M.D., director of the Cancer Research Program at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, and professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, are together examining how the protein interleukin-6 may affect STAT-3 activity in neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nervous system that occurs most commonly in infants and young children.
Neural stem cells: Neural stem cells are a subclass of stem cells that reside in the brain and have the natural ability to travel to tumor sites. Karen Aboody, M.D., assistant professor of hematology and neurosciences at City of Hope, has conducted extensive research in using neural stem cells to deliver treatments directly to the brain tumor site. Aboody and Rex Moats, Ph.D., an imaging scientist and researcher at Childrens Hospital and director of its Saban Institute Small Animal Imaging Core and assistant professor of pathology and radiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, are refining a system to track the neural stem cells to verify that they are reaching the tumor site, which will help establish the most effective treatment cell dosages.

The four seed grants will fund innovative cancer research focused on:

Nanotubes: Brain tumors shut down the body’s immune response which allows cancer to grow. Laboratory studies have shown that tiny molecules known as nanotubes can effectively deliver an engineered gene that reactivates immune cell macrophages (white blood cells within tissues) to recognize and destroy tumor cells. Behnam Badie, MD., director of the Brain Tumor Program at City of Hope, aims to expand the treatment beyond the laboratory setting.
siRNA: Short interfering RNA (siRNA) are strands of RNA that can activate or deactivate certain genes. John Rossi, Ph.D., Lidow Family Research Chair and chair of molecular biology at City of Hope, is leading research into the use of siRNA in the treatment of lymphoma, a type of cancer involving cells of the immune system. The study focuses on attaching proteins to the siRNA that latch onto receptors found specifically on lymphoma cells to help turn off the defective genes.
Leukemia vaccine: Certain types of leukemia lead to the creation of an antigen to the WT1 gene, which is involved in leukemia. Don Diamond, Ph.D., director of translational vaccine research at City of Hope, is leading the development of a vaccine targeted to WT1 antigens that may help stimulate and strengthen the body’s immune response against leukemia cells.
Medullablastoma gene: Previous research has associated the insulin growth factor (IGF) BP2 gene to the growth and development of medullablastomas, one of the most common brain cancers in children. Anat Erdreich-Epstein, M.D., Ph.D., director of basic and translational pediatric brain tumor research at Childrens Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and pathology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, is leading research to further understand the relationship of IGFBP2 to tumor development to establish more effective treatments.

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