Catapult Award Project Details
PHOTO CREDIT: ELENA ZHUKOVA –
LUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN’S HEALTH
Dr. Crystal Mackall – Stanford University
CureSearch Catapult Award: 2019-2022
Focus: Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma
Project Title: GD2-CAR T-cells for H3K27M diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas
Crystal Mackall, MD, will lead a novel trial examining GD2 CAR T-cell therapy as an approach to treat diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a highly aggressive brain tumor in children that has a 5-year survival rate of less than 1%.
Mackall is a professor of pediatrics and of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she leads the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program, serves as associate director of the Stanford Cancer Institute and is the director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) at Stanford.
Project Update: As of November 2021, Dr. Mackall and colleagues have enrolled and treated five subjects with DIPG and two subjects with DMG at the second dose level. Four additional subjects with DIPG have completed their 28-day safety evaluation with no dose-limiting toxicities. The team continues to make progress towards developing a novel therapeutic product for a universally fatal disease. They are encouraged by signs of response with radiographic imaging and improvement in clinical symptoms for some patients.
In the News
From loss comes hope: Pediatric brain tumor treatment shows promise SCOPE by Stanford Medicine
Revolutionary leukemia treatment offers ‘a hopeful moment’ in fight against solid tumors USA Today