Funding outcome

This application focuses on developing new treatment for a type of pediatric cancer, termed a neuroblastoma. This malignant tumor forms in the nerve tissue of infants and young children, and only rarely occurs in children over the age of 10. Unfortunately, neuroblastoma cells have a tendency to spread, or metastasize, to other tissues, and so 60-70% of affected children require treatment for metastatic disease. This generally involves some combination of surgery, radiotherapy and or chemotherapy. Our preliminary data has identified a specific pathway in this, and other, malignant tumors, and we seek to develop new drugs to inhibit a key disease target. Our experiments involve screening fifteen thousand chemical compounds for those capable of inhibiting the target, and these will be performed using robotic equipment available at the University of Alberta. The most promising compounds, that exhibit the strongest effects, will be assessed in more detail for their ability to inhibit the division and invasion of tumor cells, derived from multiple neuroblastomas. Assuming these studies are successful, the findings will be developed in collaboration with a pharmaceutical company that focuses on cancer treatment, enabling the translation of promising initial findings towards development of a novel pediatric cancer therapeutic.