Working together for children with cancer

May 4, 2007
Dana-Farber launches program to take aim at low-grade pediatric brain tumors

Charles Stiles, PhD, and Mark Kieran, MD, PhD

Charles Stiles, PhD, and Mark Kieran, MD, PhD

Pediatric brain tumors termed "low-grade" grow slowly and have a better outlook for patients than the high-grade gliomas that are almost always fatal. But a group of parents who have funded a new Dana-Farber program to focus on low-grade tumors say there's an urgent need for improved treatments that don't risk impairing children's bodies and minds.

Presently, about 70 percent of patients survive low-grade astrocytomas (LGAs). Patients with tumors that can be completely removed surgically are often cured. When this isn't possible, the tumors tend to recur, and the children need radiation and/or chemotherapy to control the remaining cancer — with a high likelihood that they will suffer growth and cognitive abnormalities.

Yet compared with the more deadly high-grade brain tumors, LGAs have been neglected in terms of attention and funding, say the donors. "The treatment options for low-grade gliomas haven't changed for over 25 years," says Ken Gainey, who, with his wife, Charise, has given half of the $2 million gift to establish the Pediatric Low-Grade Astrocytoma Program at Dana-Farber. The Gaineys' son, Jacob, who is 8, has had two surgeries for an LGA and recently finished chemotherapy.

The Gaineys and four other families wanted to create a cohesive, highly specific research effort bringing many resources to bear on these treatment issues: Their choice of a host institution was Dana-Farber, with its experience and interest in childhood brain cancer, and its close ties to Harvard Medical School.

Charles Stiles, PhD, co-chair of the Department of Cancer Biology, heads the program along with DFCI colleague Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, director of Pediatric Medical Neuro-Oncology. "We have the pediatric neuro-oncology program, which is unusual for a cancer center, and we have strategic alliances with the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard," says Stiles.

Searching tumors for targets

The new concentration of research on pediatric low-grade brain tumors is believed to be the first coordinated research effort committed to this specific type of tumor. Scientists from a range of specialties will focus on clinical and basic aspects of the problem, with a five-year goal of identifying a molecular target in low-grade astrocytomas that can be hit with a designer drug. Already, the investigators have begun sifting through molecular switches known as protein kinases in samples of low-grade tumors, looking for mutations involved in the tumors' development that could become drug targets.

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