Innovation Award

Dr. Sophie Postel-Vinay received the FIGHT KIDS CANCER & St. Baldrick’s Foundation Arceci Innovation Award, with a grant of €250,000/year for 4 years (€1 million in total!) at the SIOPe 5th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Oncology in Milan, Italy on May 15th, 2024.

To set up this unique Innovation Award, funded by FIGHT KIDS CANCER Representatives, we joined forces with the St Baldrick’s Foundation in the United States, inspired by our common values. Both promote thinking outside the box, true innovation, excellent quality of the science, and potential for clinical impact. We found a great partner in the St Baldrick’s Foundation, which administered the independent selection process and our collaboration was a clear success.

We aim to support the career of young researchers to let their scientific creativity bloom. This is why FIGHT KIDS CANCER, decided to fund this award. We believe, this kind of funding opportunity, will boost the appeal of research in the field of paediatric oncology. We are motivated to use part of the money collected during our charity races for this award, because young patients need the best talents to accelerate research and have access to more efficient and kinder treatments.

Dr. Sophie Postel-Vinay has an impressive track record of publications in top tier journals and a strong record of conducting original research, which has successfully been translated into clinical trials. She is highly collaborative and has achieved excellent international and innovative work with her career between the UK at the University College of London and France at Gustave Roussy. She focuses on innovative therapeutics for sarcomas in children and adolescents.

ABOUT HER PROJECT

Dr. Sophie Postel-Vinay: “Many highly aggressive cancers of the children and adolescents are caused by abnormal proteins called “aberrant transcription factors”. The latter faultily reprogram the healthy cell, turning it into a cancer cell. Transcription factors are very difficult to target and have traditionally been considered as not being amenable to any therapy. Therefore, no progress has been made for several decades in the treatment of patients suffering from these diseases, which still represent a highly unmet need.

In this proposal, we want to develop innovative therapeutics to treat childhood sarcomas and tumours of the young adult which are caused by aberrant transcription factors. To do so, we will explore two complementary approaches. First, we will try to develop a drug that triggers the degradation of the abnormal protein causing cancer, thereby selectively eliciting the death of cancer cells while sparing normal cells and limiting side-effects. Second, to have durable anti-tumour effects, we will aim at waking up the immune system and teaching him how to recognize abnormal proteins at the surface of cancer cells, and subsequently kill them. We will explore in depth both approaches in one precise subtype of very rare sarcoma called desmoplastic small round cell tumour (DSRCT), which will be used as a “model” disease. If successful, this “proof-of-concept” on DSRCT could pave the way to the development of novel therapies in other aggressive sarcomas where, similarly, aberrant transcription factors directly cause cancer. Therefore, in the long term and through international collaborations, we would aim at subsequently assessing how our findings can be generalizable to other tumours caused by aberrant transcription factors.

Our program will be multidisciplinary, gathering the expertise from several international leaders in paediatric oncology research, medicinal chemistry, immunology, artificial intelligence, and clinicians, and will uniquely be driven by its ultimate goal: developing new treatments for patient’s benefit.

The ultimate goal of her research is to transfer the most promising approach to the clinic using her expertise in academic early phase clinical trials development. She has established collaboration with physicians and sarcoma experts from UCLH / GOSH, Gustave Roussy, Institut Curie and The Institute of Cancer Research. UCLH and Gustave Roussy are the largest TYA sarcoma centers in the UK and France, respectively, and have infrastructure and expertise to develop and conduct early phase clinical trials across pediatric and adult patient groups. Dr. Postel-Vinay has successfully developed numerous clinical studies based on her laboratory research in the past and is likely to be able to translate her work on DSRCT into clinical trials. “

HER QUOTE

« I am deeply grateful towards the patient’s organizations and families who entrusted me to receive this award. Receiving this grant from a patient organization is not only a huge ethical responsibility, but also a major driving force and source of motivation to make the best out of this award. The very unique design and flexibility of this award enables the University College of London Cancer Institute, Gustave Roussy and other collaborating institutions to unite efforts: I extend my gratitude to all institutions and collaborators who have enthusiastically joined this project, to make it an international, highly collaborative effort aiming at breaking the boundaries for patients’ benefit.

Patients and families play a central role in cancer research. I know how important it is for them to contribute to scientific advances, and how much hope they invest into research. Because there are patients, parents, families, and real-life stories behind this donation, I feel even more committed to make tangible therapeutic advances as fast as possible. Also, the very special origin of this award only reinforces my motivation and long-term dedication to this program: I will put every possible effort in translating this Innovation award into impactful scientific discoveries through collaborative research, ensuring it has the very best chances of success throughout its entire duration, and beyond. »

We were honored to be able to present this award during SIOPe 5th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Oncology in Milan, Italy on May 15th.

Follow us on LinkedIn FIGHT KIDS CANCER | LinkedIn to know more about her and the progress of her ambitious and focused project.

ABOUT FIGHT KIDS CANCER

For the Innovation Award, FIGHT KIDS CANCER includes four European philanthropic organisations that actively support research on paediatric cancers and decided to join forces and establish the FIGHT KIDS CANCER (FKC) research programme. These organisations are:

FKC aims to address the lack of research dedicated to paediatric cancers by sustainably providing support to the best European research. FIGHT KIDS CANCER aims to catalyse and support pan-European leading-edge research initiatives in paediatric cancer to develop innovative approaches to improve the outcome for all children and adolescents with cancer. The FKC Programme is operated by the European Science Foundation.

For more information, please visit https://fightkidscancer.eu/

ABOUT THE ST. BALDRICK’S FOUNDATION

The St. Baldrick’s Foundation is a volunteer and donor powered charity committed to supporting the most promising research to find cures for childhood cancers and give survivors long and healthy lives.

For more information, please visit StBaldricks.org. You can also search current and past grants at StBaldricks.org/grants.