Authors: Ashley Speller
The White House recently convened patients, caregivers, oncologists, researchers and administration officials for the Cancer Moonshot Brain Cancers Forum as the administration moves to advance progress for patients with glioblastoma (GBM) and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).
Among the attendees invited was Dr. Nicholas Vitanza, an attending physician in Seattle Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center (CBDC) and the organization’s DIPG Research Lead.
Cancer Moonshot is an initiative that aims to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years and improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer.
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Authors: Colleen Steelquist
It’s been 12 years, but Brandy Epling still chokes up at the traumatic memory of her firstborn’s birth.
It was a difficult pregnancy, with preterm labor forcing a 33-day stay at a southwest Washington hospital for the mom-to-be, followed by months of bedrest. Ultrasounds revealed the baby’s brain was a bit bigger on the left side, but the local fetal medicine doctor wasn’t overly concerned.
Induced at 38 weeks, Brandy labored for 22 hours until Emree finally emerged.
“It was probably the scariest moment of my life,” Brandy said. “When she came out, her head was grossly swollen. There was this ring of fluid around her head. Her left eye was completely enlarged and she was not breathing normally.”
It took hours to stabilize the critically ill infant, who also had fluid around her heart.
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Authors: Casey Egan
Dr. Nicholas Vitanza is the program lead for Seattle Children’s Therapeutics BrainChild clinical trials
Seattle Children’s Therapeutics has launched BrainChild-04, a first-in-human phase 1 clinical trial that will be our first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell clinical trial that targets four antigens at the same time, by delivering CAR T cells directly to the brain.
The trial is for children, teens, and young adults with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), diffuse midline glioma (DMG), and other recurrent or refractory brain and spinal cord tumors.
“We believe this is the first CAR T-cell product in the world to target four antigens at the same time,” said Dr. Nicholas Vitanza, a neuro-oncologist at Seattle Children’s and the study chair for BrainChild-04.
CAR T-cell immunotherapy is an experimental treatment that stimulates the immune system to fight disease. The treatment reprograms T cells (white blood cells in the immune system that fight disease) to engage and kill cancer cells.
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Authors: Ashley Speller
At the Cure FactoryTM in Seattle Children’s Building CureTM, cell products for patients enrolled in clinical trials are manufactured on-site in downtown Seattle
Seattle Children’s, an international leader in the effort to better treat cancer in children, teens and young adults by boosting the immune system with immunotherapy, has reached a new milestone by enrolling its 500th patient in its chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy clinical trials in 10 years.
T cells play a key role in fighting pathogens and regulating the immune system. Through a potentially game-changing experimental treatment called cancer immunotherapy, a patient’s own T cells are “reprogrammed” into CAR T cells that can hunt down and destroy cancer cells wherever they are hiding in the body.
Support from more than 24,000 donors in all 50 states and across 17 other countries has raised more than $123 million to date to move this research forward. Historically, only 4% of the federal cancer research budget was allocated to pediatric cancer. In 2021, advocacy efforts helped increase that percentage to 8%, but there is a significant need for additional funding and philanthropy in pediatric cancer research to help scientists advance this important work and open new trials sooner.
On the Pulse looks back at the remarkable stories of Seattle Children’s patients who fought and beat cancer over the last decade, and shares where they are today.
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Authors: Casey Egan and Empress Rivera-Ruiz
New findings from Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research reveal that a three-dose primary series of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was safe and effective in children 6 months to 4 years of age, even when a new variant (Omicron) was circulating.
The findings were released on Feb. 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine by an international team conducting the study, including Seattle Children’s lead study investigator, Dr. Janet Englund.
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Authors: Colleen Steelquist and Casey Egan
Dr. David Rawlings, director of Seattle Children’s Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies and a scientific co-founder of GentiBio
Biotechnology start-up GentiBio — a Seattle Children’s Research Institute spin-out — announced a multi-year collaboration with global pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb, the latest success story in the research institute’s rapid development of therapies and technologies that change children’s lives. Spin-off companies and biotechnology/pharmaceutical industry collaborations are a critical part of accelerating and expanding the reach of these innovations.
GentiBio is collaborating with Bristol Myers Squibb to develop new engineered regulatory T cell (Treg) therapies to re-establish immune tolerance and repair tissue in patients living with inflammatory bowel diseases, which cause debilitating and life-threatening chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Current therapies are largely focused on systemic anti-inflammatories and broad immunosuppression, which can cause adverse effects and are not curative.
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Authors: Ashley Speller
PedAL leadership left to right: E. Anders Kolb, Gwen Nichols, Samuel L. Volchenboum, Laura Di Laurenzio, Soheil Meshinchi, Todd Cooper
The PedAL (Pediatric Acute Leukemia) Master Trial is part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Dare to Dream Project with one of Seattle Children’s doctors leading the clinical trials for pediatric acute leukemia.
For children battling through a diagnosis of relapsed leukemia, moving away from standard chemotherapy and onto newer, safer treatments is something many families are hopeful for.
Seattle Children’s is actively working to identify, validate and innovate how children with pediatric acute leukemia, including acute myeloid leukemia and other high-risk leukemias, are treated through a collaborative master screening clinical trial led by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) called Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL).
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Authors: Rose Ibarra (Egge)
Josh, Harper and Meagan in June 2022
Two years ago, Meagan stood in a hospital room at Seattle Children’s cradling her 1-year-old daughter, Harper, against her chest. Her fiancé, Josh, huddled close to them and kissed the thinning hair on top of their baby’s head.
A feeding tube was routed through Harper’s nose and her eyes were brimming with tears. Exhausted, she snuggled into her mom’s arms as a photographer took their picture.
Meagan and Josh feared those would be the last photos taken of their baby girl.
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Authors: Joy Jernigan
Drs. Alison Williams and Eric Nealy are helping to build a program at Seattle Children’s Research Institute for early career scientists who have historically been excluded from or underrepresented in biotech.
Seattle Children’s Research Institute today announced the Invent at Seattle Children’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program, a $45 million investment in training early career scientists historically underrepresented in biotech in the development of therapeutics for childhood conditions. Seattle Children’s has pledged to raise an additional $10 million for the program.
“We want to create an on-ramp to the biotech sector for people who have traditionally not had that opportunity,” said Dr. Jim Olson, program director. Read full post »
Authors: Seattle Children's Press Team
The low-cost bCPAP device combines room air with oxygen and delivers it to the baby’s nose. The tubing carrying the oxygen ends submerged in water, which creates the pressures in the system and makes bubbles when the air comes out. The bubbles create a vibration that helps to keep the lungs open and working better. (Photo: PATH)
Each year, hundreds of thousands of babies born prematurely in low- and middle-income countries die because medical facilities there cannot afford the equipment that could help babies survive those crucial first few weeks after birth.
Many of these deaths are caused by respiratory distress syndrome.
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, some 6 million preterm babies are born every year with immature lungs. Their lungs aren’t fully developed, and they have trouble staying inflated, so they collapse. While medical institutions in high-income countries have bubble continuous positive airway pressure machines to help them breathe, those bCPAP units cost thousands of dollars—making them prohibitively expensive for many low-income nations. Of those 6 million babies, 800,000 of them are born at mid-level facilities that require bCPAP devices but likely don’t have them.
The bCPAP devices keep the lungs from deflating and also deliver blended oxygen into them—a critical step because breathing 100% oxygen can cause blindness in premature babies.
Medical providers in some low-resource countries use improvised bCPAP kits assembled from parts they already have in their clinics and use them to help preterm babies survive. However, these kits do not have the ability to provide blended oxygen for babies.
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