In 2013, St. Baldrick’s Foundation and Stand Up to Cancer partnered to fund a four-year, $14.5 million grant with the goal of curing many of the most hard-to-treat childhood cancers.
The grant was made to a Dream Team made up of the leading pediatric cancer researchers in the largely disparate disciplines of cancer genomics and immunotherapeutics. Included in the Dream Team are leading researchers Poul Sorenson of the BC Cancer Agency and Dr. Marco Marra of the Genome Science Centre in BC. Patrick Sullivan of the Team Finn Foundation was also asked to be part of this ground breaking Dream Team as a patient and parent advocate.
The team will focus on developing new, targeted immunotherapeutics for the most difficult-to-cure childhood cancers in the hope of saving kids with no other treatment options. This experimental approach has gathered momentum and clinical trials have recently shown some promising results. This exciting therapy is achieving remission rates of 80%+ in Phase 1 Clinical Trials for kids who have no other treatment options left and are effectively “refractory” or palliative
Along with the other members of the team, he has participated in Team meetings in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Diego. One of his objectives as a parent advocate is ensuring the promising new therapies developed by the researchers is made available to kids in Canada.
Read more about this exciting grant and the work of the first of its kind Pediatric Dream Team.
