Recurrent Medulloblastoma
Swifty to Fund Breakthrough Research in Preventing Medulloblastoma
Dr. Michael Taylor received Michael Gustafson’s post-mortem brain and spinal cord tissue. He’s also the doctor to discover a way to PREVENT medulloblastoma. Not cure, prevent! No brain surgery, no chemo, no radiation with the awful side effects of nausea, vomiting, hair loss, hormone disruption, thyroid disruption. Michael had stopped growing. If he had survived he would probably have been about 5’2. With a 6’5 foot brother, that would be a hard reality. Imagine not putting kids through that awful treatment regiment. Dr. Taylor is working with a team of researchers across the county to make that a reality. Read about it below.
At Swifty, we take recurrent medulloblastoma personally. That’s the kind of cancer that took founder, Michael Gustafson’s life – and at 5% it has one of the lowest survival rates. When medulloblastoma recurs, doctors have no established treatment plan for patients.
We’re looking to change that. So each year, Swifty invests its research grant awards specifically to improve outcomes for children who have recurrent medulloblastoma. Here are the grants we’ve made to date:
2023 Grant
Michael Taylor, MD, PhD, FRCS(C)
Texas Children’s Hospital
$300,000 in partial support of the costs associated with the project, Building a Roadmap to Find Early Group 3 Medulloblastoma and add 2 new articles on top of current articles
Grant Award: $300,000
2021 grant
Charles G. Mullighan, MBBS(Hons) MSc MD FRACP FRCPA
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Small molecule degraders for targeting transcription factor drivers of medulloblastoma and acute leukemias
Grant Award: $100,000
in collaboration with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation
2019 grants
Dr. Michael Taylor MD/PhD
The Hospital for Sick Kids
Post-therapy metostosis: facing the real challenge of medulloblastoma treatment
Grant Award: $495,000/3 years
Dr. Zulekha Qadeer, Phd.
University of California San Francisco
Targeting TGFb Pathways for Dependencies in Group 3 Medulloblastoma
Grant Award: $20,000
in collaboration with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation
Dr Rosalind Segal, MD/PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Targeting symmetric division in pediatric cancers
Grant Award: $30,000
in collaboration with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation
2018 grants
Dr. Marc Symons – Dr. Symons explains the project
Feinstein Institute for Medical Research – North Shore
De-escalation of Radiotherapy for Medulloblastoma by a Novel DNA Damage Checkpoint Inhibitor
Grant Award: $25,000
in collaboration with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation
Shannon Wong-Michalek (Mentor) Dr. William Weiss
University of California Berkeley
Exploring synthetic lethality of one-carbon metabolism genes and mTORC1 inhibition in MYCN amplified Medulloblastoma
Grant Award: $5,000
in collaboration with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation
Medulloblastoma in the Mountains Research
A three-day scientific program featuring renowned Canadian and international medulloblastoma researchers, including over 50 high-quality oral presentations selected from submitted abstracts.
Grant Award: $20,000
Project Open DIPG
Project Open DIPG is a collaborative research effort by the Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC) and the Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium(CBTTC). It embodies a “team science” strategy – pairing CBTTC’s approach to tissue sample collection, genomic sequencing and data analysis on the CAVATICA platform with PNOC’s clinical trial efforts. By sharing data openly, Project Open DIPG will help the research community more quickly identify and develop personalized treatment strategies for DIPG and other types of pediatric brain tumors.
Grant Award: $75,000
2016-2017 grants
Dr. Eric Hutton Raabe, MD/PhD & Dr. Barbara Slusher, PhD Dr. Raabe Explains the Project
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Pre-clinical Testing of Novel Glutamine Metabolic Inhibitors in MYC-driven Medulloblastoma
Grant Award: $25,000 Project Publication
in collaboration with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation
Melanie Vincent, PhD
University of Colorado Denver, Aurora, CO
Targeting Eya2 to Inhibit c-Myc Driven Medulloblastoma Tumor Progression
Brain Tumor\Medulloblastoma
Grant Award: $25,000
in collaboration with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation
2014-2015 grants
The Hospital for Sick Children
Heterogeneity Amongst Metastases in Children with Medulloblastoma: Focusing on the Real Problem
2015 Grant Award: $120,000
The Hospital for Sick Children
Investigating the Biological Diversity of Metastatic Medulloblastoma
Grant Award $50,000
Helen Devos Children’s Hospital Foundation
Targeting Medulloblastoma Through Individualized Therapeutics
Grant Award $50,000