The Sajni Chakrabarti Fund for Pediatric Brain Cancer Research's Fundraising Page

About Sajni

Our warm, smart, bright-eyed Sajni, together with her sister Anandi, was our pride and joy.   At seven, Sajni was diagnosed with a brain tumor called DIPG for which, currently, there is no effective treatment.  She demonstrated her courage and grace throughout 19 months of treatment in England and at Dana Farber, and passed away on July 1, 2017.   We are bereft from our loss, and have started the fund to find a treatment and ultimately a cure. DIPG is the deadliest pediatric brain tumor, as 250 children in the US die every year.  Other pediatric brain tumors take the lives of many more children.  We need your help - today -  to advance the effort and save the lives of children.  Some other cancers have now found treatments, but only investment from people like you can fund the necessary research on pediatric brain tumors. 

We thank you for your generosity. Every dollar can help. 

- Prabal and Vanessa - parents of Anandi (11), Remi (5) and Sajni (forever)

We hope you will consider making a gift to this page and build upon the amazing work already started to support Dr. Filbin and her research.

About the Fund: What your dollars support

The Sajni Fund has helped fund work that is currently under consideration at "Cancer Discovery" and "The New England Journal of Medicine" and identified key potential targets through two large-scale drug and genetic screens. First, Dr. Filbin tested drugs from the National Cancer Institute’s compound library, a repository of approximately 3,000 agents thought to have anti-cancer effects. Filbin also performed a genetic screen using a type of advanced genome-technology, called CRISPR, that tested the effect of epigenetic genes in DIPG cell lines. Combining these approaches led Filbin to identify several novel targets in DIPG, one of which is already being tested in patients with DIPG and has shown promising results in two patients on this clinical trial. 

Through her work, Dr. Filbin aims to understand the function of these novel targets in DIPG, which could point the way to biomarkers that predict patients' responses. Dr. Filbin and her team are also exploring how these novel targets might be combined to boost their efficacy and circumvent drug resistance, which is much more common in single-drug approaches. Dr. Filbin aims to bring the best combinations forward into clinical trials for patients with DIPG, starting at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and then expanding to national and international clinical trials.​