Tag Archive for: AeRang Kim

Cancer cells

DOD $1.3M award will launch clinical trial to treat sarcoma

Cancer cells

MPNST is a type of cancer called a sarcoma.

The Department of Defense (DOD) awarded Children’s National Hospital $1.3M to launch a unique clinical trial. The trial will evaluate the safety of a novel drug for patients with a rare but aggressive cancer known as malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST).

MPNST is a type of cancer called a sarcoma. While rare in the general population, about half of all MPNST are diagnosed in people with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1), a condition characterized by changes in skin coloring.

“MPNST is a life-threatening cancer for which there are no adequate medical options,” said AeRang Kim, M.D., Ph.D., director of clinical research of the Division of Oncology at Children’s National. “With the support of this grant, we will conduct a clinical trial to identify effective agents that could be of great benefit to all patients with NF1 who are at risk for sarcoma.”

MPNST are aggressive and frequently metastasize. The tumors that are not able to be removed with surgery rapidly progress and become lethal. In people with NF1, MPNST often develops within benign tumors, especially atypical benign tumors.

The hold-up in the field

Scientists have been looking at the cell signaling process within both pre-cancerous tumors and cancerous MPNST. Previous research has shown that the MEK and MDM2 signaling pathway influence the development and growth of these tumors. By blocking this interplay, the Zhu Laboratory at Children’s National has demonstrated that tumors can get smaller when treated with drugs that inhibit MEK and MDM2 in pre-clinical models.

What’s unique

The trial is uniquely designed to evaluate target inhibition of novel drugs by looking at signals that may help in determining tumor response. This work will provide people with NF1 and MPNST potentially helpful treatments and increase the knowledge for all people with NF1 and those at risk of MPNST. The drugs will be available to all patients who enroll to the study.

MRI Room

Using high-intensity focused ultrasound to treat solid tumors

“I think high-intensity focused ultrasound is a really exciting technology that will allow for a different paradigm of how we think about treating solid tumors, both in a local and in a systemic way,” says AeRang Kim, M.D., oncologist at Children’s National Hospital. Dr. Kim explains high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) and how she and her team have used this technology to treat pediatric solid tumors.

HIFU is energy that can be focused on any region of the body. It allows doctors to provide different types of energy in varying amounts, and it’s typically coupled with magnetic resonance imaging, which allows for precise, focused energy to specific areas with accuracy and temperature guidance.

Children’s National was one of the first pediatric centers to open a clinical trial for the treatment of pediatric solid tumors. Since then, we’ve opened several other clinical trials and combined them with targeted chemotherapy for the ablation of benign tumors and malignant solid tumors. We are one of the few institutions that have this study open and we are leading the clinical trials and coordinating them with other institutions across the country.

Dr. Bollard and her laboratory

Catherine Bollard, M.D., M.B.Ch.B., selected to lead global Cancer Grand Challenges team

Dr. Bollard and her laboratory

Cancer Grand Challenges NexTGen team members (left to right): Amy Hont, M.D., AeRang Kim, M.D., Nitin Agrawal, Ph.D., Catherine Bollard, M.D., M.B.Ch.B., Conrad Russell Cruz, M.D., Ph.D., Patrick Hanley, Ph.D., and Anqing Zhang.

A world-class team of researchers co-led by Catherine Bollard, M.D., M.B.Ch.B., director of the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research at Children’s National Hospital, has been selected to receive a $25m Cancer Grand Challenges award to tackle solid tumors in children. Cancer Grand Challenges is a global funding platform, co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the U.S., that supports a community of diverse, global teams to come together, think differently and take on some of cancer’s toughest challenges.

The Cancer Grand Challenges NexTGen team, co-led by University College London’s Martin Pule, M.D., will be working to develop next-generation cell therapies for children with solid cancers. Cancer is a leading cause of death by disease in children worldwide. Although survival has increased for some pediatric cancers, such as blood cancers, survival for some solid tumors has seen little improvement for more than 30 years. The team hopes to build a much deeper understanding of childhood cancers and develop and optimize novel therapies for children with solid tumors, ultimately hoping to improve survival and diminish the lifelong toxicities often experienced by survivors.

“With our Cancer Grand Challenge, we hope to bring next-generation CAR T-cell therapies to children with solid tumors,” said Dr. Bollard. “What excites me most is the energized, passionate group of people we’ve brought together to take this challenge on. Big problems remain to be addressed, but we believe they can be solved, and that we’re the team to solve them.”

“NexTGen represents crucial and overdue work. It has hope written all over,” said Sara Wakeling, patient advocate on the team and CEO and co-founder of Alice’s Arc, a children’s charity for rhabdomyosarcoma. “NexTGen hopes to transform the way these aggressive solid tumors are treated with less toxic side-effects, giving the children a real chance at growing up and realizing their potential. I’m so proud to be part of this exceptional team of scientists, clinicians and advocates who want to change the story for those diagnosed.”

The NexTGen team unites scientists and clinicians with expertise in immunology, proteomics, mathematics and more, across eight institutions throughout the U.S., U.K. and France. The Children’s National investigators that will also join are:

  • Nitin Agrawal, Ph.D., associate professor in the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research at Children’s National.
  • Conrad Russell Cruz, M.D., Ph.D.,principal investigator for the Program for Cell Enhancement and Technologies for Immunotherapies at Children’s National.
  • Patrick Hanley, Ph.D., chief and director of the cellular therapy program at Children’s National and leader of the Good Manufacturing Practices laboratory.
  • Amy Hont, M.D., oncologist in the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research at Children’s National.
  • AeRang Kim, M.D., oncologist in The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children’s National.
  • Holly Meany, M.D., oncologist in The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children’s National.
  • Anqing Zhang, biostatistician in the Biostatistics and Study Methodology Department at Children’s National.

The team, co-funded by Cancer Research UK, the National Cancer Institute and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, aims to bring much needed new treatments to children with solid cancers.

The NexTGen team is one of four new teams announced today as part of Cancer Grand Challenges, representing a total investment of $100m to diverse, global teams to take on some of the toughest challenges in cancer research.

“Cancer is a global issue that needs to be met with global collaboration. This investment in team science encourages diverse thinking to problems that have long hindered research progress,” said David Scott, Ph.D., director of Cancer Grand Challenges, Cancer Research UK. “Cancer Grand Challenges provides the multidisciplinary teams the time, space and funding to foster innovation and a transformative approach. NexTGen is one of four newly funded teams joining a scientific community addressing unmet clinical needs across cancer research.”

Find out more

Cancer Grand Challenges supports a global community of diverse, world-class research teams with awards of £20m/$25m to come together, think differently and take on cancer’s toughest challenges. These are the obstacles that continue to impede progress and no one scientist, institution or country will be able to solve them alone. Cancer Grand Challenges teams are empowered to rise above the traditional boundaries of geography and discipline.

Founded by the two largest funders of cancer research in the world – Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute* in the U.S. – Cancer Grand Challenges aims to make the progress against cancer we urgently need. Cancer Grand Challenges currently supports more than 700 researchers and advocates across 10 countries, representing 11 teams are supported to take on 10 of the toughest challenges in cancer research.

The Cancer Grand Challenges NexTGen team, announced June 16, 2022, is taking on the initiative’s Solid Tumours in Children challenge. It is led by Dr. Bollard (Children’s National) and Dr. Pule (University College London), along with 23 co-investigators and 7 patient advocates, and is spread across eight institutions across the U.S., U.K. and France: Cardiff University; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Children’s National Hospital; INSERM; the Institute of Cancer Research; Stanford Medicine; Stanford University; University College London. The Cancer Grand Challenges NexTGen team is funded by Cancer Research UK, the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research.

*The National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health.

 

tumor cells

Promising new pediatric oncologic applications for focused ultrasound

tumor cells

Earlier this month, AeRang Kim, M.D., Ph.D., oncologist at Children’s National Hospital, spoke at the Focused Ultrasound Foundation’s 7th International Symposium on Focused Ultrasound about the latest developments in focused ultrasound applications for pediatric oncology.

Dr. Kim and a team of researchers at Children’s National belong to the IGNITE (image guided non-invasive therapeutic energy) team, a multidisciplinary group working to develop and transform focused ultrasound applications that will minimize treatment side effects and increase efficacy in pediatric cancer care.

In 2015, the IGNITE team conducted its first trial with a study of MR-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) for treating painful osteoid osteomas (a benign bone tumor) in children. This was followed by a trial of MR-HIFU ablation for pediatric solid tumors.

“MR-HIFU has a potential role in local treatment of tumors, both benign and malignant,” Dr. Kim said. “What I’m most excited about is that MR-HIFU has the flexibility to be combined with other treatments such as heat sensitive targeted therapy and immune therapy. I believe this combination approach will have the highest impact in terms of safety and efficacy in pediatric cancer care.”

Aerang Kim

“MR-HIFU has a potential role in local treatment of tumors, both benign and malignant,” says AeRang Kim, M.D., Ph.D. “What I’m most excited about is that MR-HIFU has the flexibility to be combined with other treatments such as heat sensitive targeted therapy and immune therapy.”

Focused ultrasound is an emergent, non-invasive therapeutic technology that uses ultrasonic energy to target tissue deep in the body without incisions or radiation, thus resulting in minimal discomfort and few complications. This also allows for rapid patient recovery. The applications are wide-ranging: from thermal ablation of tumors and other lesions to blood-brain barrier opening, to increasing tumor vasculature for improved drug delivery, to augmenting immune response, among many others.

The team is now working on combinations of focused ultrasound with other therapies, such as chemotherapy. On the third clinical trial open for accrual at Children’s National, they combine MR-HIFU with lysothermosensitive liposomal doxorubicin, a heat-activated form of the cancer drug doxorubicin, to treat pediatric solid tumors. Although results are still preliminary, the hope is that the technology will mitigate some of the acute and late effects of current multimodal therapy in children. “We want to provide more efficacy and precision with these therapies,” said Dr. Kim.

In reflecting on the potential of this new approach, Dr. Kim believes the findings can help change the way experts think about cancer treatment.  The team is studying pre-clinical models of pediatric cancer to evaluate the different modalities of MR-HIFU with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Understanding that there are limitations of MR-HIFU ablation alone, Dr. Kim believes the future for most pediatric cancer applications will be combining approaches using the various bioeffects of focused ultrasound.

“We hope that if promising effects in multiple models utilizing this combination, we can translate these findings into the clinical setting,” she said, noting that the clinical trials led by her team are among the first in the U.S. of HIFU for children. “Children’s National is one of the first pediatrics centers to lead a HIFU program and the Focus Ultrasound Foundation’s first Center of Excellence focused exclusively in pediatrics.  We hope to continue to expand our findings and improve pediatric cancer care that’s more precise, less toxic, less invasive and pain free.”

Karun Sharma

Children’s National designated Center of Excellence by Focused Ultrasound Foundation

Karun Sharma

“This designation provides a high level of recognition and legitimacy to the work our Children’s National team has done with MR-HIFU over many years,” says Karun Sharma, M.D., PhD, director of Interventional Radiology and associate director of clinical translation at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation.

More precise, less invasive and less painful surgery with lower risk of complications and no radiation exposure – these are some of the benefits of treating pediatric tumors with Magnetic Resonance Guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (MR-HIFU). And now the Focused Ultrasound Foundation has designated Children’s National Hospital as the first global pediatric Center of Excellence (COE) for using this technology to help patients with specific types of childhood tumors.

“This designation provides a high level of recognition and legitimacy to the work our Children’s National team has done with MR-HIFU over many years,” says Karun Sharma, M.D., PhD, director of Interventional Radiology and associate director of clinical translation at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation (SZI) at Children’s National. “This will allow our focused ultrasound program to expand to other areas of interest and become more cohesive while continuing to uncover additional clinical indications for pediatric patients.”

At Children’s National, radiologists use MR-HIFU to focus an ultrasound beam into lesions, usually tumors of the bone and soft tissues, to heat and destroy the tissue in that region. There are no incisions at all. In 2015, Children’s National doctors became the first in the U.S. to use MR-HIFU to treat pediatric osteoid osteoma, a painful, but benign, bone tumor that commonly occurs in children and young adults. The trial, led by Dr. Sharma, demonstrated early success in establishing the safety and feasibility of noninvasive MR-HIFU in children as an alternative to the current, more invasive approaches to treat these tumors. The team also conducted another clinical trial, led by AeRang Kim, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric oncologist, to treat relapsed soft tissue tumors such as sarcomas.

Since then, the Children’s National team has built an active clinical trials program and become a leader in translation of focused ultrasound for the treatment of pediatric solid tumors. The center is currently investigating the treatment of malignant solid tumors with focused ultrasound alone and combined with chemotherapy.

“Focused ultrasound offers a number of important benefits over traditional therapies, which are especially paramount for the pediatric population,” said Focused Ultrasound Foundation Chairman Neal F. Kassell, M.D. “The team at Children’s National has an exemplary track record in using this technology to pioneer new treatment options for their patients, and we look forward to collaborating and supporting their future research.”

As a designated COE, Children’s National has the necessary infrastructure to support the ongoing use of this technology, especially for carrying out future pediatric clinical trials. This infrastructure includes an ethics committee familiar with focused ultrasound, a robust clinical trials research support team, a data review committee for ongoing safety monitoring and annual safety reviews, and a scientific review committee for protocol evaluation.

The program also features a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and investigators from SZI, radiology, oncology, surgery and orthopedics. With the new designation and continued expansion, we will expand MR-HIFU to other areas such as neuro-oncology, neurosurgery, and urology. Ongoing and future work will investigate a rational combination of MR-HIFU with local tumor drug delivery, immunotherapy and cellular therapy.

“This recognition sets us apart as a premier pediatric institution, and will allow us to pave the way to make pediatric surgery more precise and less invasive,” says Dr. Sharma.

 

Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors

Clinical Trial Spotlight: Searching for effective therapies for malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors

Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors

Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) are aggressive soft tissue sarcomas and the most common malignancy associated with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1).

Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) are aggressive soft tissue sarcomas and the most common malignancy associated with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). Half of all MPNST are seen in NF1 patients, and MPNST is a leading cause of mortality in young patients with NF1. Researchers led by AeRang Kim, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric oncologist at Children’s National Hospital, are now searching for a medical treatment for this rare disease that currently has dismal survival rates.

“Through consortia efforts, we’ve been able to open and accrue in single histology trials of really rare diseases such as MPNST for which there are no known curative therapies other than surgery, and surgery is very difficult or not feasible in many patients,” says Dr. Kim, the principal investigator for the SARC031 trial sponsored by the Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration. “In this trial in particular, our hope is to find a new therapy that will benefit patients with MPNST for which we have no known effective medical therapies.”

Using a combination of drugs that target specific pathways involved in MPNST growth, Dr. Kim and colleagues at four other institutions offering the SARC031 trial will monitor patients to see if the drugs shrink, slow down or stop the growth of MPNSTs. Based on preclinical data demonstrating substantial MPNST shrinkage in mice treated with a combination of MEK and mTOR inhibitors, SARC031 is a trial of the MEK inhibitor selumetinib in combination with the mTOR inhibitor sirolimus for patients with unresectable or metastatic MPNST. The primary objective is to determine the clinical benefit of the combination.

SARC031: A Phase 2 Trial of the MEK Inhibitor Selumetinib (AZD6244 Hydrogen Sulfate) in Combination with the mTOR Inhibitor Sirolimus for Patients with Unresectable or Metastatic Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors

  • PI: AeRang Kim, M.D., Ph.D.
  • Title: SARC031: A Phase 2 Trial of the MEK Inhibitor Selumetinib (AZD6244 Hydrogen Sulfate) in Combination with the mTOR Inhibitor Sirolimus for Patients with Unresectable or Metastatic Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors
  • Status: Recruiting

For more information about this trial, contact:

AeRang Kim, M.D., Ph.D.
202-476-2800
AeKim@childrensnational.org

Click here to view Open Phase 1 and 2 Cancer Clinical Trials at Children’s National.

The Children’s National Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders is committed to providing the best care for pediatric patients. Our experts play an active role in innovative clinical trials to advance pediatric cancer care. We offer access to novel trials and therapies, some of which are only available here at Children’s National. With research interests covering nearly aspect of pediatric cancer care, our work is making great advancements in childhood cancer.