Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research Awards a Multi-Institutional Grant to MD Anderson, Harvard and MIT for Breakthrough Pediatric Brain Tumor Technology

PRESS RELEASE: July 19, 2024

Atlanta, Georgia – Dr. Gregory Friedman, Chief of Pediatric Neuro-oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, along with Dr. Pablo Valdes, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and the Jeannie Sealy Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and Dr. Joshua Bernstock, a neurosurgeon-scientist at Harvard Medical School and MIT, have recently been awarded a research grant from Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research. This award supports their joint research project, “Interrogation of Brain Tumor Immunophenotypes with Expansion Microscopy”.

Drs. Valdes and Bernstock have also recently published a significant study in Science Translational Medicine. Together with their teams at MIT and Harvard, they developed a breakthrough technology, termed decrowding expansion pathology (dExPath), which enhances the visualization of adult brain tumors and neurodegenerative diseases. This method involves embedding tissues in a special hydrogel. Following chemical treatments that enable tissue expansion while preserving proteins, the tissues can be expanded up to 4-5 times their original size. This expansion allows for conventional immunostaining with commercially available antibodies to reveal structures previously too small to be detected with traditional methods. This technology enables multiple rounds of staining, potentially uncovering an extensive array of structures at the nanoscale, facilitating novel biomarker discoveries.

However, this innovation has been limited to adult tissues and diseases. The team, comprising multi-disciplinary physician-scientists, aims to adapt dExPath for pediatric brain cancers, enhancing biomarker and target discovery in pediatric oncology. The Rally Foundation grant will fund this pivotal research, aiming to accelerate the discovery of novel cancer targets and improve combinatorial immunotherapies for pediatric cancers.

“Rally Foundation is thrilled to fund this important pivotal brain tumor research that hopefully will give more treatment options to kids fighting pediatric brain tumors,” shared Dean Crowe, founder and CEO of Rally Foundation.

About Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research:

Childhood cancer is the number one disease killer of kids ages 0 to 15. Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research (Rally), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, empowers volunteers across the country to raise awareness and funds for childhood cancer research to find better treatments with fewer long-term side effects, and, ultimately, cures. Rally has granted $35 million in pediatric cancer research grants, advocated and secured $223 million from the Department of Defense Medical Research Program for cancers in children, adolescents and young adults paid directly to researchers, received a perfect 100 from Charity Navigator since 2021, and according to independently audited financials, 93 cents of every dollar raised supports Rally’s mission. If you would like more information, please contact Shelley Logan at [email protected].