Dream Further Campaign hits $2 million for cancer survivorship research and care

When childhood cancer survivor Ted Sibley finished his cancer treatment as a teenager, he received a t-shirt that said, “Finish Line.” He was proud to have reached the end of a long and difficult period of treatment – but his journey didn’t end there. Ted faced late-effects from his cancer treatment, and often didn’t know where to go to get specialized survivorship care.

In early 2021, CCRF launched the Dream Further campaign to raise $2 million for much-needed survivorship research and care coordination. In November 2021, with the help of a passionate community of supporters, the Dream Further campaign reached its ambitious goal.

CCRF-funded researcher is outsmarting the defenses of AML cancer cells

Shannon Conneely, MD, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Texas Children’s Hospital and researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, envisions cancer treatment like a maze with multiple exits. As chemotherapy drugs chase down the cancer cells, the craftiest of cells manage to find a back door out. Sometimes cancer cells temporarily stop dividing and grow “quiet” during treatment — only to return with a vengeance later. Conneely’s goal: …

Celebrating the naming of the Katie Hageboeck Children’s Cancer Research Fund Clinic

On Wednesday, October 13, longtime members of the Children’s Cancer Research Fund community gathered to celebrate the dedication of the Katie Hageboeck Children’s Cancer Research Fund Clinic. The newly named clinic at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital honors the memory of 13-year-old Katie Hageboeck of Wayzata, Minnesota who requested that her savings for a new 10-speed bike be used to help kids with cancer. The Pediatric Specialty Care Journey Clinic at the Masonic Children’s Hospital, which provides world-class care to children and families facing childhood cancer, will now be called the Katie Hageboeck Children’s Cancer Research Fund Clinic. 

Layla’s Story – Living in Limbo with a Brain Tumor

Nine-year-old Layla knows way too much about cancer for her age. She can explain what a shunt does, what a port is for and she understands what’s going on when her mom, Autumn, talks with her doctors about what’s next in her treatment plan. Layla has been living with a brain tumor since she was 2 years old – she was diagnosed just before her third birthday. Her type of tumor is called brain stem glioma, a slow-growing cancer, but inoperable in Layla’s case because of where it’s located in her brain. Her medical history is too long to fit on the field trip permission forms she brings home from school – but for Layla, it’s always been this way. 

8 new scientists will kickstart their projects thanks to CCRF

Many great ideas go unexplored in the childhood cancer world due to a lack of funding. Thanks to donors like you, eight new projects are poised to kickstart in just a few weeks.

Each year, Children’s Cancer Research Fund grants young, highly qualified researchers with $100,000 to help set up their labs and launch their careers. Fewer and fewer scientists are choosing to embark on academic research, so it is more important than ever to invest in this generation of scientists today.

Sneaking past medulloblastoma’s micro-defenses

CCRF Emerging Scientist Award winner Giedre Krenciute is developing a Trojan horse of sorts to sneak past medulloblastoma’s armed defenses and kill tumor cells. She plans to change a patient’s special immune system cells, called T-cells, by transforming them into CAR T-cells or cells that can recognize and kill the cancer.

Cancer parents look back on what they didn’t know

Every parent of a child fighting cancer has a different story. But one thing we hear over and over when talking to cancer families is this…

“I hardly knew anything about childhood cancer before it happened to my child.”
In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month this September, we asked parents of kids fighting cancer to look back and remember a time where they didn’t know, and tell us what they’ve learned since then. Here are their responses.

CCRF-funded researcher uses microscopic protein pathways to beat graft-versus-host disease

Kids like Alex often need blood or marrow transplants (BMTs) as part of their treatment plans. Typically, these transplants use immune cells (T-cells) from a donor, like a sibling or a match from a registry.

After a transplant, a few things could happen: the donor cells will attack primarily the child’s cancer cells (or “bad cells”) in her body and/or the donor’s cells will attack the child’s healthy (or “good”) cells.

Cancer is not the same in kids and adults – cancer parents explain why

No matter what age someone is at diagnosis, cancer is devastating. But when it comes to treatment and research, childhood cancers and adult cancers are not the same. In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month this September, we asked a handful of cancer parents to help explain why cancer in kids is different than cancer in adults – and what you can do to help kids fighting cancer.

Ella’s Story – Facing Fear and Taking Action

Ella’s parents, Christina and Joe, remember the morning their cancer experience started – they woke up to four missed phone calls from their daughter’s pediatrician.

The day before, they’d taken 1-year-old Ella to the doctor for an ear infection, which wasn’t uncommon – but since Ella had looked a little pale lately, they also asked doctors to run a blood test to make sure everything was okay. The pediatrician had run the tests and found that Ella’s white blood cell counts were off the charts. They were calling with the news that this was a clear indication of leukemia.

Sara’s Story – What it Means to Survive

Sara Maas vividly remembers walking out of her doctor’s office the day she was diagnosed with cancer. She had just returned from her honeymoon with her new husband, Jason. She was walking out of the lobby area of her primary care doctor’s office to see the hematologist, who would give her the news that she had cancer. She didn’t know the news she was about to get, but others in the office did.

“I remember it so clearly – there were three people working there, all standing, quietly, apart from each other, who stopped what they were doing and somberly watched us walk down the hallway,” Sara said. “Jason got a feeling from the way they were looking at us – we were about to get really bad news.”

Researchers investigate existing drugs to treat AML more safely

The last time Children’s Cancer Research Fund donors heard about Ani Deshpande, Ph.D. assistant professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in California, he received funding from CCRF to research targeting previously ‘undruggable’ proteins in acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

That research served as a springboard into a new project, which received CCRF’s Emerging Scientist Award in 2021. Deshpande and his postdoctoral fellows Bryan Chen and  Deshpande have found another potential treatment that could help children fighting the deadly pediatric leukemia. The findings are published in the journal Blood.

Minnesota couple’s $925,000 gift funds leading edge cancer technology at the University of Minnesota

Above: Fritz and Glenda Corrigan, pictured with their children and grandchildren. In April 2021, staff at the University of Minnesota finished installing a piece of equipment called the Helios mass cytometer – a machine that will enable cancer researchers to glean more information from cells than has ever been available to them before.   John Wagner, MD, Founding Director of the Institute of Cell, Gene …

Designing better weapons against cancer cells

Jae-Woong Chang, PhD, initially had his eye on medical school. But then his high school teacher pointed out: “Doctors can cure about only 10,000 people in their entire lifetime, but a researcher who creates a new treatment can cure a million people.”

That comment kindled a spark in Chang: one that would inspire him to eventually earn his PhD in cellular and molecular biology and to later move more than 6,000 miles to the University of Minnesota Medical School, where he’s now a research associate in the Department of Pediatrics.

Engineering better treatments for AML

“This is a very innovative approach. Using precise gene editing, we hypothesize that we can change one protein in healthy hematopoietic stem cells and make it invisible to the antibody while preserving its physiologic function,” Genovese explained. “This would allow the administration of highly effective immunotherapies targeting a protein essential for cancer survival without the risk of severe toxicity on the healthy tissue.”

Leaving a Legacy for Her Daughter – Linda’s Story

Linda Schultz still gets a special look in her eye when she talks about her daughter, Stacey – a little sad, a lot proud. She remembers her daughter as a spitfire who loved to sing, joke around and go to bowling league with her dad. She had a fierce love of her family and animals, and she’d go out of her way to make someone feel special.

Targeting the MN1 protein in hard-to-treat cancers

As a medical student, Kathrin Bernt, MD, initially thought she was going to be a surgeon. “I loved the idea that you have a patient who is really sick, and you go in and fix them,” she said. Then she completed a rotation with a surgeon who took out 10 gallbladders a day, year after year. “By the end of three months, I was so …

Liliana’s Story – Lily Strong

Liliana (or Lily to her friends and family) was just 3 years old when she was diagnosed with leukemia, which crept in slowly – first it looked like anemia, because Liliana was pale and tired often. Her parents first started to worry when their usually cheery and energetic toddler was so tired she was asking them to carry her everywhere. When iron supplements didn’t seem to help Lily, Tiffany made an appointment with the pediatrician. Things went from bad to worse very quickly.