The originality of Dr. Ayrault’s team lies on the characterization of the putative relationship existing between mechanisms implicated into cerebellar development and medulloblastoma formation in order to uncover signaling pathway alterations and generate novel therapeutic strategies. As many tumor cells closely resemble to normal cells at a precise stage of the development, Dr. Ayrault foresees that his study will not only reinforce this new conceptual view of tumor cell biology but might also be generalized in oncogenesis. Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor. Medulloblastoma are divided in four subgroups. Two of them, Group 3 (G3) and Group 4 (G4), are still poorly understood. While genomic and transcriptomic analysis revealed key features of medulloblastoma subgroups, they have not totally revealed functional mechanisms implicated in G3/G4. Yet, a recent study from this group reveals that proteomic analysis may unveil unsuspected biological modifications in G3 and G4 medulloblastomas. Ultimately, by developing innovative technologies as well as investigating the crosstalk between developmental neurobiology and pediatric brain cancer, Dr. Ayrault hopes to fill the existing gap of knowledge in pediatric brain tumors and lead to major breakthroughs. The St. Baldrick’s Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award is given in honor of the late Dr. Robert Arceci. A pioneer in the field, this award reflects Dr. Arceci's values including creativity, collaboration, and commitment to early- to mid-career scientists.

Imaging presents a powerful tool by visualizing individual cells and cellular processes in great detail. However, it remains very challenging to obtain this detailed cellular information for entire tumors and surrounding tissue, which will be key for improving our understanding of cancer progression. To fulfil this need, Dr. Rios and colleagues have developed unique and innovative imaging strategies that can visualize individual cells and their specific behavior in an entire tissue or tumor specimen. She is applying this advanced three-dimensional (3D) imaging to study the underlying mechanisms of childhood cancer. For instance, they have been able to identify new tumor cell subsets that are now being analyzed for their role in tumor progression. In addition, she is studying the specific behavior and underlying mechanisms that allow tumor cells to invade their surrounding tissue, a key contributing factor to tumor aggressiveness. By applying these imaging technologies to address these and other unanswered questions in pediatric oncology, Dr. Rios hopes to identify novel targets for treating childhood cancer. The St. Baldrick’s Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award is given in honor of the late Dr. Robert Arceci. A pioneer in the field, this award reflects Dr. Arceci’s values including creativity, collaboration, and commitment to early- to mid-career scientists.

Despite the use of multimodal treatments and the implementation of several clinical trials worldwide, pediatric cancers survival rate has come to a standstill for the last decade. Moreover, intensive therapies are not devoid of long-term side effects, notably increasing lifetime risk for secondary malignancies. The duty of the pediatric oncologist is to propose the most adequate treatment to cure pediatric patients with the best quality of life for a long time. Therefore, understanding the biological underpinnings of pediatric malignancies is crucial to develop new therapeutic paths adapted to the specificities of a young organism. A major pitfall is the lack of adequate experimental models. To overcome this problem, Dr. Broutier is developing patient-derived 3D-organoid models (mini-tumor growing in a dish) of pediatric cancers. Beside their broad interest for research community, she will use them to identify mechanisms involved in cell death resistance in pediatric cancers, as a key step towards development of new targeted therapies adapted to children and adolescents.

Infants with blood cancer particularly suffer from the side effects of chemotherapy and have a poor prognosis. This highlights the need for new and innovative treatment approaches. Dr. Klusmann's research team and others have recently revealed the importance of areas in the genome for the development of blood cancer that were previously considered as “junk”. These areas are extremely large and can serve as a unique therapeutic target. Dr. Klusmann will investigate those areas and evaluate therapeutic option to overcome current obstacles in the treatment of infants with blood cancer.

Awarded at Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg and transferred to Goethe University Frankfurt.

Rhabdoid tumors are highly aggressive cancers that affect infants. Current treatments mostly fail, or provoke severe long-term side-effects. Among promising innovative treatments, immunotherapy has few side-effects and show spectacular efficacy in some adult cancers. Immunotherapy restores the ability of our immune system to reject cancer cells, thanks to their numerous genetic abnormalities. Dr. Bourdeaut's project consists in understanding how rhabdoid tumor cells, which harbor no genetic abnormality, may escape this rejection or, in contrary, how they may be recognized by the immune system. Understanding this may have unexpected and broad consequences for the treatment of RT and other poorly mutated cancers.

The seeds of many childhood cancers are likely to be laid during human development before a child is born. Therefore, one may view childhood cancer cells as being stuck in development. Dr. Behjati aims to define at what stage tumour cells are stuck and to find ways of stimulating cancer cells to resume development. He envisions that this will provide a way of maturing cancer cells into harmless, non-cancerous cells. The St. Baldrick's Robert J. Arceci International Innovation Award is given in honor of the late Dr. Robert Arceci. A pioneer in the field, this award reflects Dr. Arceci's values including creativity, collaboration, and commitment to early- to mid-career scientists.