From Bold Idea to Global Impact: How Rally Helped Launch Dr. Adam Durbin’s Groundbreaking Research 

In 2018, Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research said yes to a bold idea and an ambitious young scientist. That small but significant decision, a seed grant to Adam Durbin, M.D., Ph.D., did more than fund a project. It helped launch a career, a lab and a series of discoveries now rippling across the globe in the fight against childhood cancer.  

This is what happens when early support meets extraordinary potential.  

Tools That Touch the World  

One of the most exciting outcomes of Dr. Durbin’s work is the development of two small-molecule compounds: JQAD1 and iCBP4. These compounds target cancer-specific vulnerabilities in childhood tumors, and they’ve been made available to the global research community. In the spirit of open science, Dr. Durbin’s lab shared their tools freely, allowing labs around the world to build on this work for pediatric cancers and beyond. 

That’s Rally Foundation’s impact in action: not just funding a single study but igniting global collaboration.  

A Global Ripple Effect  

Because Rally went first:  

 – New druggable targets have been identified in some of the toughest pediatric cancers.  
– Children may soon benefit from more precise, less toxic therapies.  
– Researchers across the globe are using Dr. Durbin’s discoveries to power their own work.  

A Big Idea, Backed by Belief  

At the time, Dr. Durbin was a postdoctoral researcher and pediatric oncologist in the lab of renowned pediatric cancer expert, A. Thomas Look, M.D., at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His proposal? Use emerging CRISPR technology to uncover hidden weaknesses in some of the deadliest childhood cancers, including rhabdomyosarcoma and neuroblastoma. It was an ambitious pitch, but Rally said yes.  

That early support funded critical proof-of-concept experiments and set the stage for a cascade of breakthroughs, later published in top-tier journals: 

– Cell Reports (2022): Understanding new targets in rhabdomyosarcoma.  
– Cancer Discovery (2022): Exposing vulnerabilities in neuroblastoma.  
– Nature Communications (2024): Revealing epigenetic targets in medulloblastoma.  

Each paper marked more than scientific progress, it developed new potential avenues to treatment for kids fighting cancer.  

From Seed to Scientific Leadership  

That first grant became a launchpad. Rally’s investment helped Dr. Durbin secure major funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), including a K08 career development award, which facilitated him launching his own lab at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 2020. Building on this initial investment, Dr. Durbin continued to secure funding, including an R01, an R37 MERIT award and then even further R01 funding from the NCI.  

“Rally’s support was key to establishing and launching my career,” Dr. Durbin shared.  

The Power of Going First  

At Rally, we believe in going first. We invest in ideas while they are still just taking shape. We support researchers brave enough to ask, What if?  

We recently asked Dr. Durbin to reflect on what that early support meant:  

“That first Rally grant made critical experiments possible at a time when I had no independent funding. It didn’t just help my research, it helped me believe this work was worth pursuing. And that made all the difference.”  

He went on to say:  

“I realized the impact of our work when we saw how quickly other researchers adopted the tools we developed. It was humbling to know our work was helping so many others. It’s all of our hopes that this work may truly change the way we treat childhood cancer.”  

When asked what he would say to Rally donors, Dr. Durbin didn’t hesitate:  

“Thank you for betting on someone at the beginning of their journey. Your belief gave me the chance to make a difference. Together, we’ve created something much bigger than any one lab.”  

This is why early-stage research funding matters.

This is the power of philanthropic seed investing.

This is Rally.