Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, CA
Stuart E. Siegel, M.D.
Director, Pediatric Cancer Research Program
Director, Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles
Robert C. Seeger, M.D.
Principal Investigator, Pediatric Cancer Research Program
Director, Neil Bogart Memorial Laboratories
Director, Cancer Research Program
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles Research Institute
Dear Members and Supporters of the T.J. Martell Foundation for Leukemia, Cancer, and AIDS Research:
We thank you for your continued commitment to the Pediatric Cancer and Leukemia Research Program at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. Your funding is vitally important for our quest to cure children with leukemia and cancer. The following highlights some of our accomplishments in the past year.
Neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma, a tumor of the sympathetic nervous system (outside the brain), is one of the most common solid tumors in infants and children. Drs. Robert Seeger and Shahab Asgharzadeh have developed a gene-based test than can detect one neuroblastoma cell among one million blood or bone marrow cells. This super sensitive test dramatically improves our ability to evaluate response to treatment and will be used nationwide in the near future. Drs. Yves DeClerck and Seeger discovered that neuroblastoma cells can “turn on” white blood cells in a way that helps tumor cells grow and have developed new treatment strategies for children based upon this discovery.
Brain Tumors. Brain tumors are the most frequent solid cancer and also the most common cause of cancer-related death in children. Dr. Asgharzadeh discovered genes whose expression (activity) predicts the chance of survival for children with medulloblastoma. Dr. Anat Epstein in collaboration with Dr. Asgharzadeh discovered a gene that markedly impairs the growth of medulloblastoma and glioblastoma cells, the latter being a common and deadly form of adult brain cancer. This provides a foundation for developing treatments that regulate the gene. Dr. Jonathan Finlay has completed his treatment study called “Head Start,” which is curing young children with brain tumors without using radiation treatment and so preserving their ability to learn and develop.
Leukemia. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most frequent type of cancer in children and is seen throughout adulthood as well. Therapeutic advances over the past 40 years have made ALL a curable disease in 80 percent of cases. Drs. Nora Heisterkamp and John Groffen have identified a two-drug combination in laboratory studies that may improve treatment of patients with a particularly aggressive form of ALL.
Clinical testing of new treatments. We have organized multi-institution consortia that specialize in testing new strategies for childhood neuroblastoma (www.nant.org), brain tumors, and leukemia (www.tacl.us/). Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is the only institution in the US that leads three clinical trials consortia.
New research funding. Funding from the T.J. Martell Foundation has provided “venture capital” to establish outstanding groups of investigators. This investment has paid off in the past year as we have obtained, through the peer review process, multiple new research grants from the National Cancer Institute for our work aimed at curing children with cancer and leukemia. Thank you for working with us!
Sincerely yours,
Stuart E. Siegel, M.D.
Director, Pediatric Cancer Research Program
Director, Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases
Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Robert C. Seeger, M.D.
Principal Investigator, Pediatric Cancer Research Program
Director, Cancer Research Program
The Saban Research Institute
Children's Hospital Los Angeles |