Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital Archives

2014

Scholar Grant

Dr. Ange Petrosiute

Cleveland, OH

Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor of childhood, a disease that continues to cause significant and unacceptable morbidity and mortality despite advances in aggressive combinational therapy. A new approach to treat this devastating disease is much needed. Recently, immunotherapy – a therapy that uses the immune system cells to target cancer cells – has emerged as a potentially potent treatment options for many cancers. Our ultimate goal is to provide immunotherapy as an effective treatment option for Medulloblastoma. We are now one step closer to realizing this goal, as we have recently identified a target protein in Medulloblastoma called Cdk5 that plays a critical role in conferring the ability of Medulloblastoma to evade tumor killing by immune cells. Currently there are drugs in clinical trials now that can target Cdk5 function in cancer cells. Our current grant is to provide insights into how Cdk5 controls the immune evasive properties of Medulloblastoma. We believe that drugs that disrupt the function of Cdk5 in Medulloblastoma can sensitize and make the tumor cells more susceptible to attack by cell-based immunotherapy approaches. Success in our research effort through this proposal will have high impact by providing sound scientific rationale to quickly make immunotherapy an attractive therapy option for patients suffering from this devastating disease.