Cal's Angels partners with Lurie Children's Hospital and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine to create new treatments for children's cancers and save more children's lives!
Although significant advances in care and research have been achieved over the last half-century, cure rates for certain forms of childhood cancers have seen little to no improvement. Moreover, aggressive therapies currently used to treat these cancers can lead to life-long complications such as learning disabilities, heart disease, secondary cancers, and more.
While the need to develop safer, more effective therapies has never been greater, this comes at a time when there is a growing crisis in pediatric drug discovery as fewer new drugs are being developed and approved for use in children. The pharmaceutical industry has approximately 900 adult cancer drugs in the development pipeline and almost none for children's cancers. The development and testing of new agents for pediatric populations has been hit particularly hard because the diseases that affect children are different, have a smaller potential market, pose greater regulatory obstacles and offer a limited return on investment. As a result, there is a critical imperative for the medical community to initiate, develop and evaluate new therapies specifically formulated for children and adolescents.
Cal's Angels and Lurie Children's are committed to moving research forward as quickly as possible to save more children's lives. Working collaboratively with researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Lurie Children's will initiate a drug discover program, sponsored by Cal's Angels, for the repurposing of existing drug compounds and ongoing testing of new medications. Specifically, the program will use patient derived xenografts – where a sample of a child's own cancer, either bone marrow or solid tumor, is used to grow a tumor in mice – to speed development of less toxic and more effective therapies for pediatric cancer in a more cost effective and efficient way. Accountability and quarterly reporting will occur throughout the trial.
Find out how you can be a part of this groundbreaking research and help save the lives of children with cancer.
I would like to express my appreciation for the support and thoughtfulness Cal’s All-Star Angel Foundation has demonstrated in order to provide brighter futures for children and their families. Your investment is enabling us to obtain the necessary personnel and resources to pursue breakthrough research that will produce increasingly more individualized and effective treatments for our patients.
READ MOREYour support will accelerate our efforts in pediatric drug discovery, making it possible to bring new therapies from the laboratory to human clinical trials in a more efficient and cost-effective way.
READ MOREThank you for your support to accelerate discovery of new oncology therapies for young people treated at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
READ MORE