Funded by Mark and Cindy Pentecost in memory of Chika Jeune
Pediatric brain tumors are the most common cause of cancer related death in children. Diffuse midline glioma (DMG), a type of childhood brain tumor, is universally fatal. Our lab has demonstrated in mouse models that DMG is responsive to two classes of treatments known as epigenetic and metabolic therapies. A major challenge in patients, however, is that single drugs are unlikely to be effective against this highly aggressive malignancy. Our grant proposal seeks to test the efficacy and biology of a combinatorial treatment of three drugs against DMG in an effort to generate pre-clinical data which could be potentially advanced to clinical trials in patients. In addition, our grant seeks to understand how these therapies influences the population of cells within a given tumor that may confer therapeutic resistance. We envision that these therapeutic and molecular insights will advance our understanding of DMG and lead to novel treatment paradigms.
