Dr. Mitchell Cairo Awarded Grant to Support Osteosarcoma Research
The Study is Supported by a $1.5 million Helping Osteosarcoma Patients Everywhere (HOPE) Grant from St. Baldrick’s Foundation, in Partnership with Five Additional Funders.
Osteosarcoma is one of the most common pediatric bone cancers affecting children, adolescents and young adults, with chances of survival just 20 percent once the cancer has recurred or spread beyond the bone. To help combat this dismal statistic, Mitchell Cairo, M.D., professor of pediatrics, cell biology and anatomy, medicine and of pathology, microbiology and immunology, will lead a team of researchers in a study to develop a novel immunotherapy approach to circumvent resistance to treatment and increase the overall survival rate in those with osteosarcoma. The study is supported by a $1.5 million Helping Osteosarcoma Patients Everywhere (HOPE) grant from St. Baldrick’s Foundation, in partnership with five additional funders.
“With the support of this novel immunotherapy research grant, we are able to bring hope to these patients,” said Dr. Cairo. “We can do this by engineering patients’ own immune cells to target specific cancer proteins present in osteosarcoma cells and therein also overcome resistance to treatment. We hope to bring this therapy to clinical trials where we have the potential to increase cure rates and ultimately save the lives of those with metastatic or relapsed osteosarcoma.”
The HOPE Grant is made possible with the support of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, who is administering the award, Battle Osteosarcoma, the Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma Fund of Children’s Cancer Research Fund, the Faris Foundation, the Children’s Cancer Fund NY, which supports New York Medical College, and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, a research collaborator for the grant, which will cover that amount of research conducted at its institution.