Kate Amato Foundation Awarded Projects

Project Description:

Dr. Tsz-Kwong “Chris” Man at the Cancer Genomics and Genetics Program at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Cancer Center whose project is entitled “The Role of CXCL 10-CXCR3 AXIS in Osteosarcoma Metastasis,” and seeks to develop a biomarker-guided treatment approach that will eliminate metastasis in osteosarcoma. Osteosarcoma is the most common malignant bone tumor in adolescents and young adults representing significant costs in terms of the suffering and economic and emotional burdens of these patients and their families. Currently, children with osteosarcoma are treated with a combination of surgery and chemotherapy. Nonetheless, no specific therapies are available for patients with a metastatic disease. For this reason, the survival of osteosarcoma patients has been stagnant over the past three decades, while the outcome of metastatic patients remains dismal with a survival rate less than 20%. To overcome this lack of progress, the field has recently reached a consensus that the development of innovative strategies to target metastatic progression may hold the key for new therapeutics advancements. The long-term goal of our study is to specifically address this critical but unmet need by developing a novel and effective biomarker-guided therapeutic approach that can abolish metastasis in osteosarcoma. Based on our previous study and preliminary data, we propose to examine the role of the chemokine axis CXCL10CXCR3 in osteosarcoma and elucidate its relationship with the tumor suppressor p27 for metastatic promotion. The study is significant because it will eliminate the bottleneck of current chemotherapy-based treatments to increase the survival of metastatic patients. Determining the causative role of CXCL10 in osteosarcoma metastasis will likely advance the clinical management of this deadly childhood cancer.