![Conquer Cancer with Dana-Farber and the Jimmy Fund!]](../images/content/pagebuilder/FundraisingPages_PersonalPage_TopDefaultImage.jpg)
Dear Friends and Family: Our son, grandson and nephew Ollie is about to celebrate his first birthday. For this occasion, we invite you to consider making a donation in his honor to fund ATRT research. We thank you for all the love and support you have shared over these last months. We send love to you all. Thank you from our hearts.
- Dana-Farber has long led the way in uncovering more impactful therapies for ATRT. However, ATRT remains a very difficult tumor to cure, and the identification of new therapies and drug targets is a high priority in the field.
- Under the direction of Mariella Filbin, MD, PhD, an oncologist in Dana-Farber’s Pediatric Brain Tumor Center whose lab focuses on finding new potential treatments for some of the most difficult cancers, we are launching a project to inform new approaches to treat ATRT.
- Specifically, Dr. Filbin’s lab will be performing a cutting-edge approach called single cell sequencing. This process reveals the individual identity of each single cell within an ATRT tumor (both cancer cells and normal brain cells) by sequencing RNA, the “software” of each cell which carries the instructions from DNA to create proteins. Unlike standard methods that measure average gene expression of the whole tumor at once, this novel approach enables our investigators to isolate and study individual cells, painting a richer portrait of the cell of origin, their environment, and the programs necessary for tumor growth in ATRT.
- Because ATRT has a heterogeneous molecular makeup, analyzing individual cells can reveal how tumor cells interact with immune cells, normal cells, blood vessels, and other parts of the body to produce wide-ranging outcomes.
- We believe insights from this effort will help us to stratify treatment and determine whether certain subgroups of ATRT should be treated more aggressively.
- Your gift will directly advance this critically important research
