Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation Archives - Page 3 of 3

2017

Impact Grant

Clinical Trials Support Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders

Aurora, CO

The goal of the Clinical Research Program within Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders is to promote the development, scientific support and clinical translation of promising therapies for the treatment of children, adolescents and young adults with cancer and related disorders.

The Clinical Research Program includes:

Pediatric Oncologists with phase I and drug development experience
Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and Physician’s Assistants
Research Nurses
Data Managers
Regulatory Specialists
Contract and Budgeting specialists

These members support and interact directly with the basic and translational scientists in the Section and across the University, including our faculty who are members of the University of Colorado’s NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. Our focus is to provide multi-disciplinary care for patients based on the most recent advances in scientific discovery, and to translate work from the research bench, to the patient, and back to the lab in order to advance knowledge that will ultimately move the field forward toward a cure.

2014

Scholar Grant

Dr. Nicholas K. Foreman

Aurora, CO

Half the children with ependymoma (EPN) will relapse and chemotherapy trials in these children have failed. Based on our findings that immune factors strongly influence survival in EPN, we predict that application of immune therapy approaches will be particularly beneficial to these patients. Our studies have identified different behaviors in EPN patients’ immune cells, in particular the macrophages that are found in the tumors. Importantly different behaviors in these macrophages were shown to be linked to whether children with EPN relapse. Tumors from those children with a good clinical outcome harbored macrophages of the tumor-eradicating type, whereas tumors from those children who relapsed harbored a tumor promoting macrophage type. The discrete macrophage types identified in EPN suggest that different macrophage reprogramming approaches may be needed to optimize tumor treatment.

Following the success of recent translational studies and clinical trials, immunotherapy is at the forefront in the search for novel cancer cures. Clinicians now have the potential ability to reprogram the tumor immune cells from tumor promoting to tumor eradicating resulting in the possibility of cure for both adults and children who had failed conventional therapy. However, this approach has not been investigated in the context of EPN or any pediatric brain tumor. To address this critical need, we propose to measure changes in immune characteristics of EPN associated immune cells in response to immune therapeutic treatments. The proposed research will also allow us to identify immune treatments that results in optimal tumor killing. Armed with this knowledge we can approach clinical trials with rationally developed immune therapies for EPN that have a greater likelihood of success. Additionally, completion of the proposed research will provide leverage for federal funding to expand this study to all pediatric brain tumor types.