Grant: CIHR Fellowship

More than 600,000 people in North America die from cancer each year. Within the scope of people affected by this disease, brain cancer is the most common pediatric solid cancer, devastating the lives of more than 4,600 children and their families every year. Aggressive brain surgery and radiation are the treatments currently available for children. However, these therapies are often ineffective and cause serious side effects on the developing brain, such as permanent seizures and learning disabilities. Thus, more specific and less damaging therapies are urgently needed. Cancers grow very quickly and need high quantities of nutrients. However, increased nutrient supply to the cancer is not always possible for the human body. When cancer cells do not have enough nutrients to grow, they find ways to compensate for this. Our laboratory team at the BC Cancer Agency recently made a significant discovery: a small protein called eEF2K helps cancer to survive when it has no nutrients. Pediatric brain tumors produce a very high amount of this protein. In addition, children with tumors that produce excessive eEF2K protein usually die earlier than children with tumors that do not produce the protein. We are convinced that by blocking the function of the eEF2K protein, we can starve tumors to death. To test our idea, we will work with cells derived from childhood brain tumors such as medulloblastoma. We will first study if cells lacking the eEF2K protein grow slower under starvation conditions, compared to cells that have the protein. We will then grow these cells in mice and look at the same effect. If our assumption is confirmed, we will try a drug that blocks eEF2K to determine if it can kill tumor cells. No specific and effective therapy for children with brain tumors is currently available. Our study is crucial not only in understanding how eEF2K affects pediatric brain tumors, but also in finding new possible therapies for children affected by this destructing disease.