Dr. Rebecca Gardner, a researcher in the Clinical Research Division, has won a two-year, $80,000 Young Investigator Award from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation.
The awards provide critical startup funds to help new researchers and physicians pursue promising ideas. Gardner’s funds will further her study of how to engineer a graft-vs.-leukemia effect into cord blood transplants for acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
“This grant gives me the opportunity to conduct preliminary experiments using immune cells other than T-cells for future use in adoptive immunotherapy, with a special interest in treating patients receiving cord blood transplants for ALL,” Gardner said. “Alex's Lemonade Stand is a very meaningful foundation; it’s an honor to receive this grant.”
Gardner’s award is among 40 new medical research grants from the pediatric cancer foundation, totalling nearly $4 million to doctors and researchers at institutions nationwide.
The foundation emerged from the front yard lemonade stand of 4-year-old Alexandra “Alex” Scott. In 2000, after receiving a stem-cell transplant for neuroblastoma, she wanted to raise money to help find a cure for all children with cancer. Alex’s first stand generated $2,000. Before she died at age 8, her annual stands had raised more than $1 million. The nonprofit has raised more than $40 million and funded more than 200 research projects in the U.S and Canada.
“We have always believed in funding the very best research available and the best ideas out there,” said Jay Scott, Alex’s father and ALSF executive director.
Visit the ALSF website for more information on the foundation’s grant programs.
