Spring 2025
By Brittany Flaherty
Photography by Sam Ogden
For more than 30 years, the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation (PBTF) has taken action against childhood brain cancer through advocacy, support for patients and families, and funding of pioneering research. PBTF supports scientific studies that promise to enhance understanding of these cancers, expand treatment options, and improve outcomes for children—including longstanding support of cutting-edge pediatric neuro-oncology research at Dana-Farber.
PBTF recently awarded grants totaling $1,350,000 to Dana-Farber’s Pratiti (Mimi) Bandopadhayay, MBBS, PhD, and Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, to accelerate their research on pediatric low-grade gliomas (pLGGs). The most common pediatric brain tumors in children, pLGGs are associated with devastating lifelong effects resulting from the tumors themselves and from the treatments required to control their growth. There is a clear need for more effective, less toxic treatments for children with these tumors.
One PBTF grant is expediting research by Bandopadhayay and Beroukhim to explore a new potential therapeutic target. Building on their recent discovery that pLGGs with KIAA1549-BRAF mutations—the most common driver alteration in these tumors—may be dependent on a certain protein complex, Bandopadhayay and Beroukhim are leveraging this grant to further assess whether this dependency represents a powerful avenue for therapeutic development.
“We greatly appreciate this generous grant, which is driving crucial research,” said Beroukhim. “Thanks to this support, we are closer to expanding treatment options for young patients with gliomas.”
Building on their past support of Bandopadhayay, which has spanned nearly a decade, another PBTF grant is powering work by Bandopadhayay and Beroukhim to better understand why some pLGGs respond to certain targeted therapies, and why some tumors develop resistance or rebound after treatment is stopped. This knowledge could help unearth strategies to optimize the use of targeted therapies to destroy pLGG cells for good and minimize impacts on normal brain development—key steps toward advancing precision medicine for children with these tumors.
“This support from the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation is speeding our pursuit of new treatments that young patients desperately need,” said Bandopadhayay. “I’m deeply grateful for their partnership throughout the years.”
“Drs. Bandopadhayay and Beroukhim are leading research that could change the future of care for childhood brain tumors,” said Jeff Gelfand, board chair of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. “We are proud and honored to power their progress toward our shared goal: a world free of childhood brain tumors.”