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St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Home
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Explore our cutting edge research, world-class patient care, career opportunities and more.
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Improving survival and quality of life for children diagnosed with solid tumors and relapsed or refractory disease
Children with advanced or recurrent solid tumors have suboptimal cure rates, with the latter experiencing an overall survival probability of less than 30%. Furthermore, many anticancer therapies increase the risk of chronic health conditions, impacting quality of life for these children. The goal of the Developmental Biology and Solid Tumor Program (DBSTP) is to improve survival and quality of life for children with solid tumors, especially those with relapsed or refractory disease.
To improve survival rates, the DBSTP focuses on understanding the mechanisms of the therapeutic response, so researchers can create strategies to overcome treatment resistance and prevent recurrence. Researchers in the DBSTP understand the importance of clonal selection on recurrence. Clonal selection is a term given to the process that cells use to select and maintain the most advantageous genetics which, ultimately, allows them to circumvent and/or survive anticancer therapies.
Understanding clonal selection, and the rare cell populations that emerge and contribute to oncogenesis, allows researchers to comprehensively understand resistance and transform the standard of care for patients. Therefore, the DBSTP focuses on three areas of interest regarding the targeting of rare cell populations: precision medicine, cancer immunotherapy and translational research.
Department of Developmental Neurobiology
Solid tumors are the most diverse group of childhood cancers and difficult to diagnose and stage. Thus, misdiagnosis or inaccurate staging affects outcome and quality of life. The DBSTP is using precision medicine to more accurately diagnose diseases as well as stratify treatments and target rare cell clones that endure and contribute to recurrence.
The Program’s major effort in precision medicine has led to the largest, most comprehensive collection of DNA-methylation data from pediatric solid tumors: over 5,000 tumors and matched healthy tissue data have been analyzed. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to integrate molecular, cellular and clinical data to improve diagnosis, staging and subtyping of pediatric solid tumors and to deliver more effective, less toxic treatment.
DBSTP’s long-standing commitment to survivorship research continues to set the standard for identifying and minimizing late effects of treatment to preserve the survival benefit of novel therapeutic approaches without compromising quality of life.
The DBSTP’s focus on cancer immunotherapy is advancing our understanding of the immune system and the use of immunotherapy to prevent recurrence and improve quality of life for patients. Already, research in this area has led to a paradigm shift in neuroblastoma treatment. By combining upfront anti-GD2 immunotherapy with chemotherapy, the DBSTP has doubled the early objective-response rate for high-risk disease. Additionally, the DBSTP is researching the use of peptide vaccines for pediatric solid tumors and tackling the critical issue of T-cell exhaustion in CAR T-cell therapy. Members of the DBSTP are generating novel CAR T cells with improved survival and function which stands to directly impact the success rate of this type of immunotherapy.
The DBSTP has built an integrated infrastructure which relies upon interprogrammatic collaboration to answer challenging biological and medical questions. Such collaborations have already discovered therapeutic vulnerabilities in drug-tolerant persister cells that contribute to recurrence and identified ways that developmental programs contribute to cellular heterogeneity, clonal selection and recurrence. Members of the DBSTP have also identified druggable targets for neuroblastoma and rhabdoid tumors and are working diligently to translate their discoveries into clinical practice.