Share this:

The CERN Foundation Expands Understanding of Ependymoma

Ependy Angels

Ependymoma Community Gets Involved with Ependymoma Awareness Day!

In a groundswell of international support, patients, caregivers, professionals and advocates participated in a variety of events marking May 5, 2015, as Ependymoma Awareness Day.
Collectively, these events helped to create a greater understanding of ependymoma. Click on the link below to read about a few of the Ependymoma Awareness Day activities that were held around the world this year!

CERN Principal Investigator Publishes Landmark Paper That Identifies Eighteen Genes That Contribute to Childhood Ependymoma 

The Collaborative Ependymoma Research Network (CERN) Foundation has supported a major discovery in the fight against ependymoma. This discovery, led by scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, lays the foundation for developing new, much needed chemotherapy agents and finds evidence that anti-cholesterol drugs called statins slow growth of ependymoma tumor cells.

The research was published in the prominent scientific journal Nature Genetics. Richard Gilbertson, M.D., Ph.D., director of the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center, serves as the paper’s co-author and is the Co-Principal Investigator of the CERN Foundation.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have identified eight tumor-promoting oncogenes and 10 tumor suppressor genes that converge on a handful of cell functions and help to launch the pediatric brain tumor ependymoma.

The findings dramatically expand understanding of ependymoma, which until now has been linked to alterations in just two genes. The tumor is discovered in 150 to 200 children and adults annually in the U.S., where it is the third most common pediatric brain tumor. Researchers expect insight from this study will lead to new chemotherapy agents and more effective treatment of a cancer that remains incurable in about 28 percent of pediatric patients.

READ MORE

Foresters Holding Ependymoma Awareness Game  

The Santa Barbara Foresters will be holding their Ependymoma Awareness baseball game at 5:00 p.m. this Saturday, July 25.
The game will be at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium in Isla Vista, CA on the UCSB campus against the San Luis Obispo Blues. Tickets will be sold at the gate and are all general admission: $6 for adults, $3 for seniors and $1 for kids.
Follow us.
Friend us.
Pinterest
Follow us.
CERN Foundation PO Box 217 | Zionsville, IN 46077 US
powered by emma
Subscribe to our email list.