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The Jon-Wesley Duncan Options for Infants Grant

Project Title

Improving Outcomes for KMT2A Rearranged Infants with ALL

Layman’s summary

Infants with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a cancer of the blood, have very poor outcomes with leukemia free survival rates as low as 36%. With the current standard of care chemotherapy, only 30% of patients will go into remission with undetectable disease after six weeks of treatment. Dr. Gruber has identified a new treatment which is able to put 69% of these patients into remission with undetectable disease within three weeks of starting therapy. This treatment combines two chemotherapy medicines not previously given to infant ALL patients, called bortezomib and vorinostat, with three standard chemotherapy medicines during the first and third cycles of treatment. Despite encouraging data, a subset of patients do not go into remission with undetectable disease and/or go on to relapse. This clinical trial combines the most active chemotherapy combination studied to date in this population with immunotherapy and precision medicine to improve the cure rate for this deadly cancer.

Tanja Gruber

This Project By The Numbers

  • Years Active
    3 Years
  • Amount Awarded
    $200,000
  • Institution
    Stanford University