In May 2024, CureSearch for Children’s Cancer announced a partnership with LifeArc intended to create “far-reaching impact for kids with cancer”. Funding will be provided for a CureSearch Acceleration Initiative by Dr Gregory Friedman, which aims to transform treatment options in paediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGGs), a “devastating” form of childhood brain cancer. Current treatment options can result in “signficant toxicity and limited efficacy”, highlighting the need for innovative therapeutic approaches.
“Children with brain tumours need safer, more effective treatments, and they need them now.”
Dr Friedman’s project
Dr Friedman is working on a treatment for brain tumours that enables the child’s immune system to attack tumour cells without causing damage to normal cells in the body. He and his team are combining a genetically modified herpes virus with a unique tumour vaccine called SNAPvax, designed to increase the immune attack. With support from CureSearch, Dr Friedman has assembled a “dream team”, comprising academia and industry representatives, that has already identified the ideal brain tumour proteins to target with the vaccine. The team is developing a tumour model to test these vaccines.
The researchers have also found that the combination therapy of the cold-sore virus and the novel tumour vaccine is “more effective” than either of the therapies alone and that the timing of therapies is “very important”. Delivering the vaccine before the virus is more effective than giving the virus before the vaccine as it “excites the immune system” to attack the tumour instead of removing the virus, which allows the virus to kill more tumour cells.
Dr Friedman commented that “outcomes for children with high-grade gliomas” are “unacceptably poor” with standard therapies “minimally effective and toxic”.
“We plan to quickly translate the combination therapy to paediatric clinical trials with the goal of improving outcomes and lessening the side effects for these children in desperate need of improved, targeted therapies.”
An international collaboration
Kay Koehler, CureSearch President and CEO, is “thrilled to expand” the co-funding model internationally and “grateful for LifeArc’s support of Dr Friedman’s groundbreaking work”.
“Because promising research projects in children’s cancer often go unfunded, our goal is to fill that gap by ensuring the quick advancement of these promising projects into the clinic where they can help children today.”
The partnership “demonstrates confidence” in the “unique funding model”, and Kay believes that Dr Friedman’s work will “continue to deliver these impactful results”. Dr David Jenkinson, Head of Childhood Cancer at LifeArc, commented that the project “really stood out to us”.
“This novel approach holds real promise in an area of high unmet medical need – aligning with our strategy…Our mission at LifeArc is to do better for children with cancer by helping to progress research that could lead to the development of new, less toxic treatments, ultimately saving lives.”
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