Our Blog

Mollie-Claire, Lost her best friend, Connor Cruse, to Cancer when she was only 8 years old. Combining her passion for Musical Theater and childhood cancer awareness through Princesses of the 417.

TeamConnor is excited to welcome Jordan Morris to our organization this summer. She will be one of our collegiate interns and be an important part of our mission for childhood cancer research and in-patient programs.

TeamConnor Childhood Cancer Foundation research grant update from Dr. Richard Lu at Cincinnati Children’s.  Thank you, Dr. Lu and your team for this wonderful update on the research you and your team conducted. 

TeamConnor Childhood Cancer Foundation Grant Quarterly Report – 1/31/2023 Project Title: Therapeutic Blockade of Metabolic Dependencies in Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma  Institution: Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center  Researcher:  Dr. Biplab Dasgupta  We discovered that antifolate inhibitors of ATIC synergize with inhibitors of one carbon metabolism and with diets reduced in folic acid. We have partially completed toxicity studies of our drug-diet combinations by performing blood and liver enzyme analysis in mice and results are encouraging. We are using methotrexate or the ATIC inhibitor LSN in combination with Shin2 (an inhibitor of 1-carbon metabolism) in folate-containing or folate deficient diet to test if this drug-diet combination eradicates DIPG. We are also extending our ATIC genetic studies (CRISPR) to other DIPG lines and in a mouse model of brainstem glioma.