Active Grants and Sponsored Research

This funding supports Dr. Crompton’s participation on this clinical trial as part of the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation’s “Sunshine Project,” which implements a novel collaborative approach that will accelerate the development of new drugs and therapies leading to the prevention and cure of pediatric cancers.

The major goals of this project are to determine the cellular mechanisms that are effected by the combination of FAK and AURKB inhibition in Ewing sarcoma cells. We believe that understanding these interactions could lead to the discovery of additional therapeutically targets for patients with this aggressive pediatric cancer.

This project examines the hypotheses that Ewing sarcoma is dependent on ITGB2 signaling, that adhesion molecules are critical for the development of metastasis, and that Aurora B kinase inhibition could be a potent targeted approach for combination therapy with FAK inhibition in the treatment of Ewing sarcoma.

The goal of this project is to develop a circulating tumor DNA assay that utilizes peripheral blood draws to quantify DNA released from the tumors into the blood stream as a surrogate for measuring tumor burden, treatment response, and monitoring for relapse in patients with Wims tumor.