CURE Childhood Cancer Invests $5.7 Million to Accelerate New Treatments for Children Facing the Toughest Cancers
CURE Childhood Cancer Invests $5.7 Million to Accelerate New Treatments for Children Facing the Toughest Cancers
For many childhood cancers, progress has transformed what was once considered impossible.
For others, children are still waiting.
This year, CURE Childhood Cancer is investing $5.7 million in research aimed at changing the outlook for children facing some of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat cancers. The funding will support 18 projects at leading institutions across the country, advancing new therapies, precision medicine approaches, and treatment strategies designed to improve outcomes for children with limited options today. The investment comes at a time when childhood cancer researchers continue to face significant funding challenges despite extraordinary scientific opportunity. More than 200 proposals were submitted for consideration, reflecting both the urgency of the need and the remarkable innovation taking place across the field.
“Our goal is not simply to fund excellent science,” said Kristin Connor, CEO of CURE Childhood Cancer. “We are intentionally investing in opportunities that have the potential to improve outcomes for children facing the cancers that remain the most difficult to cure. These are the children and families who need progress most urgently.”
The projects funded this year target some of pediatric oncology’s greatest challenges, including relapsed and treatment-resistant leukemias, aggressive brain tumors, neuroblastoma, sarcomas, and other high-risk childhood cancers. Researchers are developing next-generation immunotherapies, advancing targeted treatment strategies, overcoming drug resistance, and moving promising discoveries closer to clinical testing. Together, the portfolio reflects a deliberate focus on accelerating progress where the need is greatest and where research has the potential to reach children more quickly.
While childhood cancer survival has improved significantly over the past several decades, outcomes remain unacceptably poor for many children diagnosed with high-risk or relapsed disease. For these families, better treatments cannot come soon enough.
The therapies helping children today exist because researchers were given the resources to pursue bold ideas years ago. CURE’s 2026 research portfolio represents the next generation of those opportunities.
“Every breakthrough begins as an idea,” Connor said. “Our responsibility is to identify the most promising opportunities and help move them forward. We cannot predict which project will lead to the next major advance, but we know progress only happens when great science has the chance to become something more.”
Through this year’s investments, CURE is helping accelerate discoveries that could ultimately lead to new therapies, new clinical trials, and new hope for children facing cancer.
Because every child deserves better options. And every child deserves the chance to benefit from the progress still to come.
CURE’s 2026 RESEARCH AWARDS
Early Investigator Awards
Kelsey Jonus, PhD, Emory University
Development of targeted cell therapy approaches for ATRX mutant neuroblastoma
Gengwen Tian, MD, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine
Enhancing GD2.CAR-NKT anti-tumor efficacy against neuroblastoma and tumor microenvironment through targeting PRDM1 and ZBTB7B
Catherine Carbone, PhD, Seattle Children’s Hospital
Rewiring neuroblastoma immune circuits with tumor arrays
Francesca Alvarez Calderon, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Engineering TCR-T cells to overcome trafficking barriers in Ewing sarcoma
Translation to Clinic Awards
Iannis Aifantis, PhD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Targeting antigenic escape to strengthen immunotherapies in pediatric leukemia and lymphoma
Eveline Barbieri, MD, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine
Targeting neutral lipogenesis in MYCN-driven neuroblastoma
Mignon Loh, MD, Seattle Children’s Hospital
Moving affinity-tuned T cell engagers for dual targeting of leukemia closer to clinical trials
Bin Zhang, MD, PhD, Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope
Developing novel miR-142-armored anti-CD19 CAR T cells to target B-ALL
Jessica Pollard, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Phase I Study of Azacitidine and Venetoclax for children, adolescents, and young adults with high-risk myeloid disease
David Langenau, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Metastasis and cell state plasticity in rhabdomyosarcoma
Juan Vasquez, MD, Yale University
Preclinical efficacy of novel pH-sensitive peptide-drug conjugate in pediatric sarcoma and biomarkers of response
Samuel John, MD, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Dual targeting lymphoid and myeloid antigens by a novel switch adaptor protein for LS acute leukemia
Linda Resar, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Targeting resistance to Menin inhibitors in KMTA2A-r acute myeloid leukemia
Kathleen Sakamoto, MD, PhD, Stanford University
Targeting CREB: CBP interaction for treatment of pediatric AML
Shweta Joshi, PhD, The University of California, San Diego
Overcoming macrophage-mediated resistance to boost chemotherapy in neuroblastoma
David Daniels, MD, PhD, Mayo Clinic
Advancing local drug therapy for pediatric diffuse midline glioma through precision infusion and drug efflux modulation
Yun Huang, PhD, Texas A&M University Health Science Center
Molecular targeting of MiT fusion proteins in translocation renal cell carcinoma
Soheil Meshinchi, MD, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Development and translational evaluation of CLEC2A-directed ADCs for KMT2A-r AML
