Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD

Funded by the Dick Vitale Pediatric Cancer Research Fund

At Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, we are focused on finding new treatments for children with cancer.  Children with an aggressive form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma do not have many treatment options. These patients are first treated with surgery and chemotherapy. If those treatments don’t work, there are very few other options. We have developed a new clinical trial to give hope to kids with bone cancer that has not responded or has come back. The type of therapy in this clinical trial uses a patient’s own immune system to attack their cancer and prevent it from coming back. This type of therapy, called CAR T therapy, is expected to be safer and lead to better outcomes with less side effects. Dr. Brentjens, the lead researcher on this grant, is a world leader in CAR T therapy. In addition to bringing this very exciting new treatment option to children with bone cancer, we will also study if we can decrease the amount of chemotherapy that these children will need to receive as part of treatment. We also hope to be able to use the results of this study to predict ahead of time who will respond to this new treatment and look for new ways to improve the treatment in future clinical trials.