Our grant program funds research every step of the way, from early-stage innovative research all the way to lifesaving clinical trials for patients with Ewing Sarcoma. Your donations fund research that we believe have the potential to bring better treatment options and a cure to patients with Ewing Saroma in the near future.
With only 8% of government cancer research funding going to pediatric cancers, hospitals and institutions rely on medical grants given by foundations and the public. Ewing Sarcoma treatment has one of the oldest protocols, with the last working chemotherapy developed in 1970. The treatment is very demanding on the body, with patients often needing multiple rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.
Because childhood cancer protocols call for a hard regimen, children and families will often spend days, weeks, months, and years in the hospital while undergoing treatment. Planned events are often a special moment for kids who get to have an experience away from the hospital and just be kids. We plan on making these special moments for those who already have enough to worry about on their own. Your donation could help put a smile on a kids face and motivate them to spread their wings and have fun!
Our Research Grants
Dr. Christopher R. Vakoc, MD, PhD
2023 Grant Recipient
CSH Cold Spring Harbor Lab
The Vakoc Lab
The research of the Vakoc Lab focuses on high-throughput genetics to reveal vulnerabilities of the EWS-FLI1 oncoprotein.
The Vacok lab recently discovered that ETV6 indirectly promotes tumor growth by modulating EWS-FLI1’s behavior in Ewing Sarcoma. In experiments in cancer cells and mice, the group showed that, in the absence of ETV6, EWS-FLI1 goes into overdrive. But rather than revving up tumor growth even further, EWS-FLI1’s extreme hyperactivity halts tumor growth. The hope is that these new insights can be used to develop a targeted drug that interferes with the interaction between ETV6 and EWS-FLI1 and might lead to an effective treatment for Ewing Sarcoma. The EWS-FLI1 oncoprotein is a compelling target for therapeutic intervention in Ewing Sarcoma, but drugs against this type of target are challenging to generate by the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Alissa C. Baker, MD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Developmental and Molecular Biology
2021 Grant Recipient
Albert Einstein College of Medicine / Montefiore Health Systems
Research Grant supporting Ewing Sarcoma zebrafish drug screen, using chemical libraries and a zebrafish model of Ewing Sarcoma, high throughput drug screens will be performed to identify potential new inhibitors. The goal of the research is to discover small molecule inhibitors that can be used in the treatment of Ewing Sarcoma with high efficacy in the prevention and treatment of metastasis with less toxicity than systemic chemotherapy.
Patrick Grohar, MD, PhD
2020 Grant Recipient
(Note: Lead Investigator Research through Collaboration)
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Research Grant supporting the correlative biology in conjunction with *SARC037 Clinical Trial for Ewing Sarcoma patients.
We are excited to announce another research grant we are supporting this year. The grant supports the correlative biology in conjunction with *SARC037 Clinical Trial for Ewing Sarcoma patients.
Dr. Brian Compton, MD
2020 Grant Recipient
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Brian Crompton is a physician-scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and his research focuses on finding new treatment approaches for patients with Ewing sarcoma who do not respond to the first line of treatment of VCD / IE chemotherapy or relapse patients.
In the Crompton laboratory, we use high-throughput screening assays to identify novel combinations of targeted therapies, such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors, that work together to kill Ewing sarcoma cancer cells. Our screening approach treats cancer cells growing in culture dishes with drugs combined using a robotic liquid handling platform. Each candidate drug combination is tested against cell lines grown from Ewing sarcoma tumors donated by multiple patients. In this way, we hope to identify combinations that work for as many patients with Ewing sarcoma as possible. Once we identify potent treatment combinations, our goal is to work with our colleagues in the clinical research field to develop clinical trials to test the efficacy of these combinations for patients.