Inside Duke Medicine
$6 million for child tumor research
posted June 5th, 2008By Lauren Shaftel Williams
The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation (PBTF) is giving $6 million to its research institute at Duke University to further the work started by a $6 million grant it gave in 2003 to create the institute, Duke President Richard H. Brodhead and Chancellor for Health Affairs Victor J. Dzau, M.D., announced in May.
PBTF co-founders Mike and Dianne Traynor presented the new grant at a reception held at Duke’s Levine Science Research Center.
“The grant to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation Institute at Duke from the foundation is very emblematic of their role in moving childhood brain tumor research forward in the United States and worldwide,” said Darrell Bigner, M.D., Ph.D., director of the institute.
Researchers at the PBTF Institute at Duke will use the funds to continue their study of pediatric brain tumors, which are the leading cause of cancer death in children and adolescents. Four out of 10 children with brain tumors die within five years of diagnosis.
Since Duke received the initial $6 million grant five years ago, PBTF-funded research at Duke has focused on projects aimed at developing gene-based therapies, vaccines and other novel treatments for common childhood brain tumors, including medulloblastomas and astrocytomas.
The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Asheville, and is the world’s largest non-governmental funder of childhood brain tumor research.