Childhood Cancer Facts
We want to give you the childhood cancer facts, so you know what that inspire us to Rally On towards our goal of finding better treatments with fewer long-term side effects and ultimately cures for kids that have cancer. Childhood Cancer Facts Childhood cancer is the #1 disease killer of kids in America. Every school day, 46 children are diagnosed with cancer. 1 in 5 children diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. will not survive. Approximately 1 in 264 children in the U.S. will develop cancer before turning 20 years old. According to the National Cancer Institute Funded Research Portfolio (NFRP) the average spent on childhood cancer is 4%. NCI spent 5% on childhood cancer research during 2018. Since 2004, only six drugs are approved by the FDA specifically for cancers in children and adolescents compared with hundreds of adult cancer drugs. Side-effects from current treatments are severe...
Dean’s Reflections – August 2021
Hi Friends, Can you believe the kids are already back in school? Summer flew by! It is great to see some normalcy returning. I mean, who wants to miss another season of college football? I’ll be honest: this summer was a rough patch with our Rally Kids. Too many relapses and too many kids earning their angel wings. But, there was great news too! Rally Kids finishing treatment and ringing the bell, some moving onto survivorship clinic and plenty of Rally Kids graduating from high school and headed to college. Even wedding bells rang—so sweet. The end of summer means Childhood Cancer Awareness Month is almost here! Fasten your seat belts. Below is a link to a blog that is All Things September. #GOLDSTRONG™ is quickly becoming the universal battle cry of the childhood cancer community. Please feel free to use #GOLDSTRONG in September and all year long. DRUM ROLL, PLEASE! As you know,...
Dean’s Reflections – June 2021
Hi Friends, The Rally Team came to me with an idea. And you know at Rally, if there is one thing we like, it is new ideas! They wanted to do a quarterly newsletter that would be concise and let Rally, our community as a whole, know what was happening. They asked me if they could call it Dean’s Reflections. I personally think Rally Reflections would have been better, but I finally agreed. So welcome to the first Dean’s Reflections. My first reflection is looking back on 2020 and at the first half of 2021. I honestly have to tell you that I am so proud and humbled by Rally and our amazing community. In the middle of a pandemic, your generous support allowed us to support 352 families in 30 states through the hardships of fighting childhood cancer and an international pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, you supported our Department of Defense Medical Research advocacy efforts resulting in...
New RNA Therapies for Glioblastoma from Small Phase 1 Study
Glioblastoma (GBM) in children and adults is a deadly brain tumor with a poor prognosis. Current treatment includes surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. Unfortunately, most patients still experience tumor growth despite the treatment and have a median survival of less than two years. Immunotherapy has shown success in the treatment of other types of tumors, but that success has been elusive with malignant brain tumors, such as GBM. However, new ribonucleic acid (RNA) based immunotherapy is showing promise in treatment for GBM. Rally-funded researcher Elias Sayour, MD, PhD, and his team at the University of Florida recently published exciting discoveries focusing on the utilization of RNA dendritic cell (DC) vaccines and RNA nanoparticle therapies in the treatment of GBM. RNA-based therapies offer clear advantages over other...
AML Treatment Developments
Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research is excited to announce new developments in the treatment of childhood acute myeloid leukemia (AML) emerging from research in the Meshinchi laboratory at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch) in Seattle. Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that harnesses the immune system to kill cancer cells. To avoid toxicity and unpleasant side effects of treatment, researchers search for molecules or a “target” on the surface of cancer cells that do not exist on normal cells, so only the targeted cancer cells are attacked by the immune system. Such immunotherapies, including Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy, have been successful in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Identification of such targets for AML has been more challenging because many of the targets found on AML cancer cells are also...
The Spark Has Ignited A Fire: How Rally’s Seed Funding Paved the Way for Dr. Volchenboum and the PCDC
At Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, we often describe ourselves as “philanthropic seed investors in the next great discovery.” That’s because Rally invests early and continues to invest as projects make progress. It’s also because we like to take a few risks when it comes to funding the more “unconventional” research projects. After all, it only takes one spark to light a fire, and that spark—that next great discovery—could pave the way to finding a cure. Dr. Sam Volchenboum’s Pediatric Cancer Data Commons (PCDC) was one of those “unconventional” projects that sparked a glorious fire—all because of Rally Kid Ruby, her father Dr. Jonathan Kaufman, and our shared desire to fund groundbreaking research for childhood cancer. How It Started It all started back in 2015, when Rally Kid Ruby was diagnosed with embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, a form of soft tissue cancer. Being the...
Childhood Cancer Facts
We want to give you the childhood cancer facts, so you know what that inspire us to Rally On towards our goal of finding better treatments with fewer long-term side effects and ultimately cures for kids that have cancer. Childhood Cancer Facts Childhood cancer is the #1 disease killer of kids in America. Every school day, 46 children are diagnosed with cancer. 1 in 5 children diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. will not survive. Approximately 1 in 264 children in the U.S. will develop cancer...
Dean’s Reflections – August 2021
Hi Friends, Can you believe the kids are already back in school? Summer flew by! It is great to see some normalcy returning. I mean, who wants to miss another season of college football? I’ll be honest: this summer was a rough patch with our Rally Kids. Too many relapses and too many kids earning their angel wings. But, there was great news too! Rally Kids finishing treatment and ringing the bell, some moving onto survivorship clinic and plenty of Rally Kids graduating from high school and...
Dean’s Reflections – June 2021
Hi Friends, The Rally Team came to me with an idea. And you know at Rally, if there is one thing we like, it is new ideas! They wanted to do a quarterly newsletter that would be concise and let Rally, our community as a whole, know what was happening. They asked me if they could call it Dean’s Reflections. I personally think Rally Reflections would have been better, but I finally agreed. So welcome to the first Dean’s Reflections. My first reflection is looking back on 2020 and at the first...
New RNA Therapies for Glioblastoma from Small Phase 1 Study
Glioblastoma (GBM) in children and adults is a deadly brain tumor with a poor prognosis. Current treatment includes surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. Unfortunately, most patients still experience tumor growth despite the treatment and have a median survival of less than two years. Immunotherapy has shown success in the treatment of other types of tumors, but that success has been elusive with malignant brain tumors, such as GBM....
AML Treatment Developments
Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research is excited to announce new developments in the treatment of childhood acute myeloid leukemia (AML) emerging from research in the Meshinchi laboratory at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch) in Seattle. Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that harnesses the immune system to kill cancer cells. To avoid toxicity and unpleasant side effects of treatment, researchers search for molecules or a “target” on the surface of cancer cells...
The Spark Has Ignited A Fire: How Rally’s Seed Funding Paved the Way for Dr. Volchenboum and the PCDC
At Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, we often describe ourselves as “philanthropic seed investors in the next great discovery.” That’s because Rally invests early and continues to invest as projects make progress. It’s also because we like to take a few risks when it comes to funding the more “unconventional” research projects. After all, it only takes one spark to light a fire, and that spark—that next great discovery—could pave the way to finding a cure. Dr. Sam Volchenboum’s...