Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis faculty members Mark Rutherford, an associate professor of otolaryngology—head and neck surgery, and Yang E. Li, an assistant professor of neurosurgery and of genetics, each have been awarded grants from St. Baldrick’s Foundation to study pediatric cancers. The foundation’s mission is to improve research on cancer treatments and quality of life for children after treatment ends.
Li was awarded the St. Baldrick’s Foundation Scholar Grant, which provides $234,000 for his project to study disruptions in gene activity that may underlie diffuse midline glioma. This is a deadly childhood brain tumor with no effective treatment. There has not been much research on genetic and epigenetic dysregulation at single-cell resolution. Li’s investigation will apply advanced artificial intelligence tools, combined with cutting-edge single-cell sequencing techniques, to find the roots of cellular dysfunction that increases the risk for cancer. This fine-resolution approach will allow for the identification of potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
Rutherford has been awarded a St. Baldrick’s Foundation Research Grant that provides $200,000 for a study aimed at reducing hearing loss — a common but often overlooked side effect of many chemotherapy treatments in children. One of the most frequent culprits is cisplatin, a drug often included as part of chemotherapy treatments and that can cause life-long hearing loss. Current treatments to mitigate this effect tend to reduce the cancer-fighting effectiveness of cisplatin. Rutherford will investigate whether a novel compound that has already shown to be effective in combatting hearing loss caused by noise exposure might work for pediatric cancer patients suffering from chemotherapy-related hearing loss, without interfering with cisplatin’s therapeutic effects.
