Wilmington, DE – Ten years ago, 4-year-old cancer patient Alexandra “Alex” Scott announced that she wanted to raise money for cancer research by holding a lemonade stand. Since Alex opened that first stand, the foundation bearing her name, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, has raised more than $30 million towards fulfilling her dream of finding a cure for all children with cancer.
Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation works directly with doctors and researchers to identify the specific challenges faced in bringing new treatments to children with cancer. Following a competitive review process, Andrew Napper, PhD, Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research (NCCCR), Nemours Biomedical Research, has received an Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation Innovation Award, a two-year, $200,000 grant for the study of targeted therapies for pediatric cancer. The Innovation Awards provide critical and significant seed funding for experienced investigators using novel and promising approaches to finding causes and cures for childhood cancers.
On Tuesday, August 10, Alex’s mother, Liz Scott, was at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children for the ceremonial check presentation. “I am thrilled to be able to award this grant on behalf of all of our supporters so that this project, aimed at improving treatments for difficult to cure leukemias, can move forward as quickly as possible,” said Ms. Scott. “As a parent, I know the sense of urgency that parents feel about the need to find new and improved cures, and Alex showed us that we can all do something to make a difference in this fight.”
Led by Dr. Napper, who heads the High-Throughput Screening and Drug Discovery Lab at NCCCR, this project aims to develop novel treatments targeted specifically at acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). ALL strikes 2,500 children per year in the United States alone. For many, ALL is curable, with overall survival approaching 80%. However, 20% of childhood ALL remains difficult to treat.
Many of the most difficult-to-treat childhood leukemias are triggered by rearrangement of the gene MLL (mixed lineage leukemia). MLL rearrangements are very common in infant leukemia, where they are found in 80% of patients. These infants have an especially grim prognosis: a five-year survival rate of barely 40%.
Funding for this research, entitled Discovery of Inhibitors of MLL Fusion Proteins as Targeted Therapies for Pediatric Acute Leukemia, will allow Nemours researchers to concentrate on targeted therapies for infants and young children with this particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat form of leukemia.
Dr. Napper commented, “I am very excited to receive this award. This is an enormous boost to our efforts to develop novel therapies for poorly treated childhood cancers. I joined Nemours to make a difference in the lives and survival prospects of desperately sick children. Thanks to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation and their generous grant, we can move closer to achieving this goal.”
“This grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation to support discovery of safe targeted drugs to treat pediatric leukemia recognizes that NCCCR is taking the right steps to fight childhood leukemia,” adds Dr. A. K. Rajasekaran, Director of NCCCR.
Dr. Napper joined the Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research in March 2009. Exploiting the latest technologies, Dr. Napper work closely with other investigators and clinicians at Nemours to develop novel targeted therapies for childhood cancers. Dr. Napper has published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor on eight issued US patents. The Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research brings physicians and researchers closer together so that they can more rapidly bring new scientific discoveries into clinical treatments.