Rady's Children's Hospital Archives - Page 2 of 2

2017

Impact Grant

Jeanie Spies

San Diego, CA

The Nurse Practitioner has an important role in coordination and oversight of the Integrative Medicine Program. She functions as the liaison with each of the teams to ensure adherence with hospital safety policies and procedures. She also coordinates visits so that the patients receive the appropriate interventions expeditiously. This coordination is performed as part of her existing clinical role. Funding from the Hyundai Hope on Wheels Impact Grant would be used to protect 25% of her position specifically for Integrative Medicine coordination and program development. Areas of anticipated development include expansion of existing services to reach a larger population of our patients, addition of new services that are aligned with the goals of the program, and enhancement of clinical research and quality improvement projects that will demonstrate the impact of the services and inform future planning.

Expansion of this enrichment program will have a positive impact on our patients and their families by mitigating the deleterious side effects associated with cancer treatment, enhancing compliance with anti-cancer therapy, allowing for therapy to be delivered on time, and increasing quality of life. The overall goal of the program is that the delivery of essential anti-cancer therapy will be facilitated, allowing for increased survival, and that toxicities associated with therapy will be minimized, so that short-term and long-term dignity is preserved. Additionally, skills learned by patients and families while undergoing Integrative Medicine therapies, will be maintained and practiced afterward to cope with challenges.

2014

Impact Grant

Dr. Tina Udaka

San Diego, CA

Medulloblastoma (MB) is the most common malignant brain tumor in children. Recent studies have demonstrated that there are four subgroups of the disease that differ from one another in terms of both molecular characteristics and patient outcomes. Despite these distinctions, all MB patients currently receive the same therapy, including surgery, radiation and high-dose chemotherapy. Although these treatments have allowed many patients to survive, approximately one-third of MB patients still die from the disease. Moreover, survivors suffer severe side effects from treatment, including dramatic losses in cognitive function, endocrine disorders and increased susceptibility to other cancers later in life. Thus, more effective and less toxic therapies for MB are desperately needed. We hypothesize that each MB subgroup will respond to different therapies, and that tailoring therapy based on tumor subgroup will significantly improve patient outcomes. To test this hypothesis, we will use patients – tumor cells – “propagated in mice” to screen for drugs that are effective against each subgroup of MB. We will test close to 7,000 compounds that are FDA-approved or in clinical trials for other cancers to identify those that inhibit the survival of subgroup-specific human MB cells. Since these drugs have already been tested in patients with other diseases, they can be moved quickly into clinical trials for MB. These studies will enable us to move away from the one-size-fits-all approach to therapy and develop treatment strategies that are effective for all MB patients.