The St. Baldrick’s Foundation has announced it will fund two Weill Cornell medical students this summer with fellowship grants to support their research into pediatric brain tumors.
Emilie George and Raymond Chang will share the Summer Fellowship in the laboratory of the Children’s Brain Tumor Project, where they will work testing new drugs against gliomatosis cerebri (GC) and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). GC and DIPG are two of the most deadly pediatric brain tumors, with extremely poor prognoses; they have been two of the primary targets investigated at the CBTP over the past decade.
Emilie George’s research, which will focus on gliomatosis cerebri, will expand on Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield’s existing work by testing different combinations of drugs based on the findings of genetic sequencing. Dr. Greenfield’s research has focused on using precision medicine techniques to match treatment options to a specific patient’s tumor; many drugs need to be tested against different tumors and genetic mutations in order to gather the data needed to improve scientists’ ability to match a tumor to a treatment.
Raymond Chang’s work will support Dr. Mark Souweidane’s research into DIPG by testing different combinations of drugs that could be delivered directly to a brainstem tumor via interstitial infusion. Dr. Souweidane is approaching the end of a milestone clinical trial testing the safety of interstitial infusion, also called convection-enhanced delivery (CED), as an alternate way of getting a cancer-fighting drug into a pontine glioma. Once this Phase I trial is complete and CED is deemed safe, future trials will test different drugs and drug combinations against DIPG tumors. This summer’s project will test the promising new anti-cancer drug perifosine in combination with other, established chemotherapy drugs that may include trametinib, idarubicin, or actinomycin D.
The Children’s Brain Tumor Project team is grateful to St. Baldrick’s for the continued support of its research.
More about the Children’s Brain Tumor Project
More about DIPG | More about Gliomatosis Cerebri
