Grace: A Child's Intimate Journey Through Cancer and Recovery
SeniorMadness is trying its best to keep me far from the Land of Blogging for Childhood Cancer. Whenever a week goes by without writing a post, I feel badly because I know that childhood cancer continues its destruction. With everything in me, I need to do all I can to stop it. 200 children around the globe are going to die today, and 600 more are going to get diagnosed. I refuse to allow SeniorMadness to gobble my words. I love sharing what others are doing, and I love sharing news about advances in research.
Yesterday, I read this terrific news from St. Baldrick’s:
St. Baldrick’s announces more than $5.1 million grant to the Children’s Oncology Group! For the first time, this year’s grant will also help COG member institutions open four specific high-impact clinical trials which they might otherwise not be able to offer their patients.
Clinical trials are the breeding ground for hope for a cure for cancer. While sharing about St. Baldrick’s, I also need to mention and thank the 46 Mommas for their tireless support for St. Baldrick’s.
Speaking of research, news from Kids Cancer Research Foundation today is about T-Cells.
T-Cell therapy involves taking out the child’s T-Cells, making them stronger, and linking them to a mouse antibody that is then injected back into the child to target the Neuroblastoma (NB) cells.
The T-Cells are natural killer cells, kind of like Pac Men. The mouse antibody portion of the combination helps identify the NB cells, thereby brining the T-Cells to the Neuroblastoma cells to be killed.
Dr. Louis, from Texas Children’s Hospital/Gene Therapy at Baylor College, just published their T-Cell trial in the journal “Blood.” Out of 19 children in 2 groups, 8 children had no disease after frontline treatment. After 3 years, not one of the 8 relapsed. Frank Kalman, executive director of Kid’s Cancer Research Foundation, reports, “Numbers like this don’t exist in NB (neuroblastoma) research.”
Continuing on the subject of research, I want to tell you about a very fun activity coming up this weekend to help support CureSearch. There is a very brave boy named Sy Sherman who has inspired his Aunt Rachel to “Kick It” into high gear to fight childhood cancer. If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, please check out this great event that will take place on Saturday, October 29th.
http://www.kick-it.org/events/kicking-cancer
Finally, I want to share a petition. (You know how much I love sharing easy, clickable ways to be an advocate for childhood cancer!)
Click, click… nice… way to go!!!
And you, SeniorMadness… hee hee, got you this time!
You "Kick It" Sy!
Melinda Marchiano 
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