St. Baldrick's Foundation Grants more than $22 million for Lifesaving Childhood Cancer Research

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Jul 21, 2016, 09:00 ET

LOS ANGELES, July 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The St. Baldrick's Foundation, a volunteer-powered charity dedicated to raising money for childhood cancer research, is proud to announce that it has awarded 79 new grants totaling more than $22 million to support the best and brightest researchers looking for cures and better treatments for all childhood cancers.

Every two minutes a child is diagnosed with cancer worldwide. One in five kids diagnosed in the U.S. will not survive, and of those who survive, two-thirds will suffer from long-term effects from the very treatment that saved their life. As the largest private funder of childhood cancer research grants, St. Baldrick's supports the best research no matter where it takes place, giving hope to every child.

"At St. Baldrick's, we believe that every child deserves to live a happy and healthy life, free from cancer," says Kathleen Ruddy, CEO of the St. Baldrick's Foundation. "Although progress has been made, there is still much to be done when it comes to finding cures for the countless subtypes of kids' cancers and creating less toxic treatments. Kids are special and need to be treated that way. Our donors, volunteers and partners make these grants possible, and we are beyond thankful for each and every one of our supporters for contributing to our mission."

One of the Foundation's larger and more unique grants this year is called the Treehouse Childhood Cancer Initiative. It is awarded to the University of California, Santa Cruz for a 5-year consortium grant, and offers a breakthrough approach to personalized medicine for children with cancer. The grant from St. Baldrick's will evaluate the clinical utility of real-time sharing and integration of pediatric cancer data generated by genomic studies in the U.S. and Canada with data from 10,000 tumors generated by previous research projects. The Treehouse Initiative will compare an individual child's cancer to both childhood and adult patient cohorts across all cancer types to aid in decision-making for treatments. This cross-cancer analysis can identify situations where a drug developed for another indication may work in a pediatric cancer, providing new treatment avenues to children with cancer.

Grants are awarded to the following institutions:

Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, N.Y.
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope, Duarte, Calif.
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass.
Boston University, Boston, Mass.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
Children's Cancer Therapy Development Institute, Beaverton, Ore.
Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, Mass.
Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Calif.
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa.
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Mass.
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.
Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Wash.
HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Huntsville, Ala.
Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y.
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, Md.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, N.Y.
Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill.
University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio
Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health, Indianapolis, Ind.
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, Calif.
Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, Wash.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tenn.
Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.
The Children's Oncology Group Foundation, Inc., Philadelphia, Pa.
The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala.
The University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Va.
University of California – San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif.
University of California – Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Calif.
University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, Mich.
University of Colorado Cancer Center, Aurora, Colo.
University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, Fla.
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa.
University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.
UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas
Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va.
Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Check out the impact being made by St. Baldrick's grants. To see the research St. Baldrick's is funding near you, visit the Grants Search page, or to learn more about each grant category visit the Grant Types page on the Foundation's website. For additional information on each grant or to interview a researcher please email [email protected].

About St. Baldrick's Foundation
As the largest private funder of childhood cancer research grants, the St. Baldrick's Foundation believes that kids are special and deserve to be treated that way. St. Baldrick's funds are granted to some of the most brilliant childhood cancer research experts who are working to find cures and better treatments for all childhood cancers. Kids need treatments as unique as they are – and that starts with funding research just for them. Join us at StBaldricks.org to help support the best cancer treatments for kids.

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SOURCE St. Baldricks Foundation