Since 2019, Sam Day Foundation granted $370,000 to the Children’s Cancer Therapy Development Institute for an innovative and comprehensive tumor bank program.
The program will be managed and overseen by Scientific Director Dr. Charles Keller, and researcher Andy Woods.
A shortage of mouse models and cancer cell lines is one reason why rare cancer groups struggle to make progress in research. The CuReFAST program enables patients to donate their tumor to the scientific community for advancements in research to occur, by developing new mouse models and cancer cell lines representive of the aggressive tumors kids are dealing with today.
In addition, cc-TDI will screen the tissue for potential impact with 60 existing drugs, collect medical information (such as what drugs the tumor has been exposed to), and run DNA and RNA sequencing on each live tissue donation.
Once processed, the information and materials will be available for researchers both locally and around the world to move basic science discoveries through to the next phase of research.
The comprehensive nature of this tumor bank, combined with advocacy from rare cancer groups will open doors for a world of possibilities and reasons to hope.
For more information on cc-TDI and the CuReFAST program, click here.
For cc-TDI researcher bio’s click here.
