When Lily Guenther, M.D., was just starting her career in childhood cancer research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research gave her something big, support to chase a bold idea. She was studying osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer that mostly affects kids and teens. It’s especially hard to treat when it spreads to other parts of the body. This is called metastatic cancer, and sadly, many kids already have metastatic osteosarcoma when they’re...

When kids go through cancer treatment, they often feel pain, nausea, anxiety and other tough symptoms and side effects. Lillian Sung, M.D., Ph.D., at The Hospital for Sick Children (also known as SickKids), wanted to help make that better. With early funding from Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research in 2015 and 2017, she started a project called SPARK. One part of it, called SSPedi, is a tool that lets kids tell doctors how they’re feeling during treatment. Because of Rally...

Kids with Down syndrome are 20 times more likely to get a type of blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Sadly, they also have a harder time with the side effects from treatment. But thanks to early funding from Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, one scientist decided to change that and he’s making real progress. John D. Crispino, Ph.D., was a researcher at Northwestern University when he received his first Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research grant in...

When kids get cancer, doctors and scientists work hard to find new and better treatments. But every big discovery starts with seed funding, the first crucial investment that helps scientists test bold ideas. That’s exactly what happened with Christian Hurtz, Ph.D. Between 2019 and 2022, Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research provided seed funding to support Dr. Hurtz’s research. This funding was a game-changer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many labs had to stop work, Rally...

Neuroblastoma is a hard-to-treat cancer that mostly affects kids. One of the biggest challenges is that some of the cancer cells learn to resist treatment, like chemotherapy, and that makes the cancer even harder to beat. With a research grant from Rally Foundation, Noha Shendy, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is aiming to figure out how cancer cells do this. She discovered that these cells can actually switch between two states: one that’s easy to treat...

April Weissmiller, Ph.D., is a scientist who wants to help kids with cancer. Thanks to receiving grant funding from Rally Foundation during her time at Vanderbilt University and now at Middle Tennessee State University, she studied a tiny part of our cells called WDR5. It turns out WDR5 helps cancer cells grow. Dr. Weissmiller asked a big question: What if we block WDR5? Could that stop the cancer? With help from Rally, she tested it, and it worked! When she blocked WDR5, the cancer cells...