The Cure Starts Now Foundation has awarded nearly $1.7 million in new grants to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to support pediatric cancer research, continuing a partnership that began in 2007.
The collaboration was launched after Brooke and Keith Desserich’s 6-year-old daughter, Elena, died of a rare brain tumor.
The couple founded the nonprofit to fund research aimed at developing better treatment strategies for treating diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, also known as DIPG.
This latest round of funding will support three initiatives at Cincinnati Children’s:
- A third-generation clinical trial focused on advancing a radiation-based therapy for pediatric brain tumors.
- A research project examining the genomic mechanisms that drive cancer growth.
- Continued development of an international cancer registry that compiles linked patient data from more than 129 hospitals worldwide.
In 2020, the hospital’s brain tumor division was renamed the The Cure Starts Now Brain Tumor Institute in recognition of the partnership.