MIB Agents OsteoBites

OsteoBites welcomes Yingqi Hua, MD from Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine to discuss his work on molecular subtyping of osteosarcoma, ecDNA, and more.Dr. Hua has been engaged in basic and clinical research of malignant bone tumors for more than 10 years, focusing on the individualized comprehensive treatment of advanced bone tumors, and is committed to transforming research results through clinical research. His research interests include 1. Multi-omics study of osteosarcoma: Multi-omics analysis identifies osteosarcoma subtypes with distinct prognosis indicating stratified treatment. 2. Epigenetic study of bone tumors: the function of histone mutation and the function of different histone methylation modification. 3. Drug screen: Screening sensitive drugs by patient derived xenograft(PDX) and explore the mechanism of drug action. 4. Clinical trial of advanced stage sarcomas based on precision medicine.

In this special Mother's Day edition of osTEAo, Mia, Sammy, and Elise open up about a topic that's often left unspoken but is profoundly personal—fertility and infertility within the AYA cancer community. With honesty and vulnerability, they share their experiences navigating fertility challenges in the wake of a cancer diagnosis, including the emotional strain of tough conversations with family members, the often-overlooked financial barriers to parenthood, and the mental and emotional load that comes with planning for a future that feels uncertain.They dive deep into what it means to grieve lost possibilities, celebrate alternative paths to building a family, like adoption or being a meaningful figure in a child's life, and explore how cancer reshapes the ways we think about legacy, impact, and nurturing others. This episode isn't just about biology; it's about identity, agency, and finding power through knowledge and community.Whether you're grappling with fertility decisions, supporting someone who is, or simply seeking space to feel seen and understood, this conversation offers comfort, courage, and connection. Tune in and be reminded: you're not alone, your voice matters, and there's strength in sharing the journey.Read more about the fertility issues facing AYA cancer patients, in an interview with MIB Agents Junior Advisory Board president Sammy and vice president, Mackenzie.  

Matteo Trucco, MD, pediatric oncologist, Director of the Children's Cancer Innovative Therapy program at the Cleveland Clinic, and chair of the MIB Agents Scientific Advisory Board joins us on OsteoBites to provide a preview of the FACTOR 2025 scientific panels in lay person terms with a brief overview of vocabulary and terms as a helpful resource for patients and families attending our FACTOR 2025 conference.FACTOR 2025 registration is now open! Join us June 26-28th in Salt Lake City. Check out the Scientific Program Register for FACTORThere is a discounted conference room block at the beautiful Grand America Hotel. Book your room. We have a limited number of FACTOR Travel Awards for OsteoWarrriors to attend. OsteoWarriors must be nominated by a healthcare provider. More info on eligibility and guidelines.

Brian Flesner, DVM, MS, DACVIM (Oncology), discusses the recently opened clinical trial studying an Autologous Cancer Vaccine with Checkpoint Inhibitor for the Treatment of Canine Osteosarcoma.The purpose of this study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of K9-ACV, an autologous killed tumor cell vaccine combined with a novel checkpoint inhibitor (CD200AR-L), compared to standard-of-care chemotherapy for the treatment of canine appendicular osteosarcoma (OSA). K9-ACV has safely been used in over 1,000 dogs, and the vaccine has been shown to display safety in a previous study (without the addition of the checkpoint inhibitor). By evaluating K9-ACV, this trial aims to advance safer, immune-based treatment options for canine cancer that may offer comparable or superior outcomes to chemotherapy.Find more information about this study:https://studypages.com/s/autologous-cancer-vaccine-with-checkpoint-inhibitor-for-treatment-of-canine-osteosarcoma-565406/Adrienne Wright, adrienne@ardentanimalhealth.com, +1 (859) 619-5893

osTEAo co-hosts Mia and Sammy sit down with fellow OsteoWarriors Andrew and Mackenzie for a real, raw, and refreshingly honest convo about FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—as young adult cancer survivors. From missing prom and sports to navigating dating and college with a whole new perspective, these resilient humans get into what it actually feels like to rebuild a life after treatment.They talk about setting boundaries on social media, finding new passions, and surrounding yourself with people who truly get it. They also dive into the hard but vital work of self-advocacy and honest communication.

TJ Utset-Ward, MD, cirujano ortopédico del Nicklaus Children's Hospital, ofrece una descripción general de las opciones quirúrgicas y los avances en el osteosarcoma.El tratamiento del osteosarcoma consiste en una combinación de quimioterapia y cirugía para extirpar el tumor. En la década de 1980, la amputación de extremidades se utilizaba en el 80 % de los casos. Hoy en día, gracias a los avances en las técnicas quirúrgicas, la tecnología y nuestro conocimiento del osteosarcoma, más del 90 % de los casos son susceptibles a una cirugía para preservar la extremidad. Hoy en día, los pacientes y sus familias pueden incluso elegir entre varias opciones, incluyendo reconstrucciones que se adaptan al crecimiento del niño. Analizaremos algunas de estas opciones y cirugías, así como los objetivos y prioridades de la cirugía de osteosarcoma.El Dr. T.J. Utset-Ward es cirujano ortopédico pediátrico especializado en oncología ortopédica pediátrica en el Hospital Infantil Nicklaus. Es cubanoamericano, hispanohablante y nativo de la ciudad de Miami, y se siente honrado de servir a su comunidad como uno de los pocos cirujanos oncológicos ortopédicos del país dedicados exclusivamente al sarcoma pediátrico y adolescente. Obtuvo su título de médico en la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Vanderbilt en Nashville, Tennessee. El Dr. Utset-Ward completó su residencia en cirugía ortopédica en la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Chicago/UChicago en Illinois. Realizó una beca de investigación en oncología musculoesquelética en la Universidad Estatal de Ohio en Columbus, Ohio, y posteriormente amplió su formación con una beca de investigación en oncología ortopédica pediátrica en el Hospital Infantil Nationwide. Sus intereses clínicos y de investigación incluyen sarcomas óseos pediátricos, sarcomas de tejidos blandos, oncología en adolescentes y adultos jóvenes, impresión 3D, implantes y diseños personalizados para cada paciente, salvamento y reconstrucción de extremidades, alargamiento de extremidades, transporte óseo, exosomas y oncología de precisión. El Dr. Utset se ha unido a la comunidad de MiB y espera seguir apoyando los esfuerzos para ayudar a las familias que enfrentan el osteosarcoma. Vive en Miami con su esposa, la pediatra Leah Utset, y sus dos hijos.

The osteosarcoma community has the power to drive change in childhood cancer research! This important OsteoBites episode features Nancy Goodman, JD, Founder & Executive Director of Kids v Cancer, as she discusses how you can help advocate for the Give Kids a Chance Act—a crucial bill aimed at expanding access to novel combination therapies for kids with cancer.The Give Kids a Chance Act is bipartisan legislation that builds on the RACE for Children Act by requiring pharmaceutical companies to evaluate promising multi-drug combinations in pediatric cancers when those drugs are being tested together in adults. Since many of the most effective cancer treatments involve drug combinations, this bill is essential to improving treatment options for children with osteosarcoma and other pediatric cancers.Be a voice for change! Learn actionable ways to support this bill and ensure kids with cancer have access to more innovative therapies.

Dr. Betsy Young, a physician-scientist from UCSF provides an overview of her funded work: Tumor cGAS-STING repression drives immune evasion in osteosarcoma and is therapeutically targetable via host STING activation. This work was funded by an MIB Agents 2024 OutSmarting Osteosarcoma YI Hope grant Because of Charlotte.Osteosarcoma (OS) has an immunosuppressive macrophage-rich, T-cell-depleted tumor microenvironment (TME). By performing bulk RNA seq of OS cell lines treated with STING agonist, the lab has defined an OS-specific STING activation signature, which demonstrated a significant protective effect on survival in OS patient samples. In immunocompetent OS models, systemic STING agonism shows curative anti-tumor effects, shifts the tumor microenvironment towards a pro-inflammatory phenotype, and induces immunologic memory. Importantly, host STING activation is sufficient to promote this anti-tumor immunity. The lab has demonstrated that STING activation has anti-tumor benefit in animal models and a protective effect in the human disease, nominating this innate immune sensing pathway as an important therapeutic target in OS.As a physician-scientist and a pediatric oncologist, Dr. Young's aim is to advance the field of pediatric oncology in her research career focused on the immunobiology of osteosarcoma. She completed her Pediatric Hematology/Oncology fellowship training at UCSF, receiving strong clinical training in high-risk pediatric solid tumors and early-phase clinical trials. Now, as a faculty member, she is investigating the pathogenesis of osteosarcoma metastasis in the Sweet-Cordero lab at UCSF, with a specific focus on immuno-oncology translational therapeutics.

What does accessibility really mean, and how does it impact the daily lives of young adults navigating cancer and disability? In this powerful episode of osTEAo, Accessibility Wins, Fails & WTF Moments, young adult osteosarcoma survivors Mia, Sammy, Isabelle, and Inaaya open up about their personal experiences—shedding light on the challenges of inaccessible environments, the emotional weight of losing independence, and the importance of a strong support system.From navigating airport security and festival layouts to breaking down misconceptions about disability, this conversation is raw, real, and filled with invaluable insights. Tune in to hear firsthand perspectives, candid humor, and practical advice on how to be a better ally to the disabled community.

Matthew Dietz, DO, MSEd joins us on OsteoBites to discuss Optimizing Ewing Sarcoma and Osteosarcoma Biopsy Acquisition: Consensus Recommendations from the Children's Oncology Group Bone Tumour Committee.To advance the care and cure for patients with osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma it is necessary to safely improve the amount and usability of diagnostic biopsy material obtained. Indeed, it is anticipated that future osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma clinical trials will incorporate molecular biomarkers into treatment risk stratification underscoring the need for optimal tissue collection and processing practices.Historically open/incisional biopsies were the predominant biopsy approach; however, image-guided core needle biopsies have increased in frequency and are safe for patients. These procedures are less invasive and reduce recovery times but have potential limitations. Including the potential for lower tissue volumes, which can limit components of clinical care - including pathologic assessment, diagnostic accuracy, and molecular evaluations - along with the opportunity for research studies with leftover tissue (following informed consent). Additionally, once biopsy material is obtained the handling of the specimen for histologic and subsequent molecular testing requires careful timing, processing and tissue prioritization to ensure all clinical and research opportunities are preserved for the patient.To help optimize these critical elements in patient care the Children's Oncology Group convened a multidisciplinary group of clinical and scientific experts to create reference recommendations for harmonizing tissue acquisition and processing algorithms for osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma specimens.

Michael Lizardo, MS, PhD, a staff scientist in the Poul Sorensen laboratory at BC Cancer Agency, joins us on OsteoBites to discuss how the pharmacologic inhibition of EIF4A blocks NRF2 synthesis to prevent osteosarcoma metastasis.Dr. Lizardo shares his lab's recent findings in Clinical Cancer Research on how targeting the dysregulated mRNA translation factor eukaryotic initiation factor 4A (EIF4A), via pharmacological inhibitors, prevents the protein synthesis of nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor 2 (NRF2), which is a cytoprotective protein metastatic OS cells require to successfully colonize the harsh microenvironment of the lung. He also discusses how the EIF4A1 inhibitor, CR-1-31B, and a related clinical-grade compound (Zotatifin) prevent OS cell adaptation to oxidative stress (a major stressor in the lung) in 2D and 3D cell culture models, as well as ex vivo lung organotypic cultures. Moreover, he discusses how drug treatment can inhibit lung metastasis and prolong the survival of animal subjects in pre-clinical mouse models of metastatic OS.

Osteosarcoma Webinar Series: Sowmya Ramesh, PhD joins us on OsteoBites to discuss how multi-modal omics analysis identifies targetable sensory neuron circuitry that promotes sarcoma disease progression.Bone pain is a hallmark of bone cancers, including osteosarcoma (OS), mediated by skeletal-innervating peripheral afferent neurons. However, the roles of tumor-associated sensory neurons in OS beyond pain perception remain poorly understood. To investigate their regulatory functions, a chemical-genetic approach was employed in mice carrying a knock-in allele for TrkA to perturb sensory nerve innervation during OS growth and progression. TrkA inhibition in these transgenic mice significantly reduced sarcoma-associated sensory innervation and vascularization, altered tumor-associated macrophage polarization, decreased tumor growth and metastasis, and extended overall survival.These findings suggest that targeting pathological innervation in OS may serve as an adjunctive therapy to enhance clinical outcomes and survival.Dr. Ramesh is a postdoctoral researcher from the James lab at Johns Hopkins. The lab's research focus lies at the intersection of skeletal pathophysiology and stem cell biology. The lab looks at the interaction of nerves in various musculoskeletal repair including bone repair and regeneration, osteoprogenitor cell characterization, and neoplastic bone. Dr. Ramesh specifically works on understanding how peripheral nerves regulate osteosarcoma disease progression.

In the latest episode ofosTEAo: Spilling the Tea on Osteosarcoma and AYA Cancer, young adult osteosarcoma survivors Mia, Sammy, Sloan, and Mackenzie share how their pets became their greatest sources of comfort, laughter, and unwavering support during treatment and recovery.From Sloan's dog Sam instinctively wrapping around their leg post-surgery to Mackenzie's pup carefully avoiding pressure on her biopsy site, these furry friends always seemed to know when their humans needed extra love. Mia recalls how her cat Enzo made a dramatic mess the moment she returned from the hospital—because, of course, he needed to remind her who was boss! And Sammy's pet was her rock through every twist and turn, proving that while so much changes during cancer treatment, the love of a pet remains constant.Tune in for heartfelt stories, funny pet antics, and a celebration of the incredible healing power of animals. Because sometimes, the best medicine has four legs and a wagging tail.

Alice Soragni, PhD shares information about PREMOST: an organoid-based functional PREcision Medicine trial in OSTeosarcoma (NCT06064682), a clinical trial that is studying the feasibility of using organoids for predicting drug response and guiding therapy in osteosarcoma.Patient-derived tumor organoids (PDTOs) are lab-grown replicas of tumors that closely resemble the original cancer in both structure and behavior. These models can be rapidly created from small samples obtained during biopsies or surgeries, allowing us to test their responses to different drugs in the lab. This makes them highly valuable for developing personalized treatment strategies, particularly in light of a growing body of evidence showing how PDTOs can in many cases accurately mimic clinical responses. The Soragni Lab has developed a unique platform to grow these organoids efficiently from osteosarcoma surgical samples. They can create these three-dimensional avatars without needing complicated cell sorting or lengthy lab procedures. This means they can start testing drugs and get results within a week of the surgery, a turnaround that is rapid enough to potentially be used in the future to help guide treatment decisions In a pilot study, they found that testing drugs on these organoids provided insights that closely matched the patients' actual clinical outcomes. Osteosarcoma organoids with low viability after neoadjuvant chemotherapy matched patients who experienced higher tumor cell death (necrosis) after treatment and long-term disease status. The lab also investigated responses of PDTOs from advanced, recurrent, and metastatic sarcomas and found that the viability of these organoids in the lab correlated with the time to the next treatment in patients. The data suggests that osteosarcoma organoids could help predict how well some treatments may work. Encouraged by these promising results, the Soragni Lab has initiated a clinical trial to further explore the use of PDTOs to predict osteosarcoma therapy responses. Dr. Soragni will describe the study design for this first-of-its-kind, organoid-based clinical trial in sarcoma.Alice Soragni, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She has a Bachelor and Master of Science cum Laude from the University of Bologna, Italy, and a PhD from the ETH of Zuerich, Switzerland. Her laboratory couples basic research into mechanisms of disease to the development of novel therapeutic strategies. Her expertise lies in the development of tumor organoid models to investigate the biology of rare tumors such as osteosarcoma and perform screenings for functional precision medicine applications.

Chris Thomson, DVM, DACVS-SA from Ethos Veterinary Health will discuss the Minimally Invasive Metastasectomy in Canines (MIMIC) clinical trial which will assess the feasibility and tolerability of VATS for lung metastasis and eventually deliver this care as an outpatient procedure. In addition to assessing the therapeutic benefit in canine patients, the study will also pave the way to conduct accelerated studies to identify new drugs to prevent lung metastases in both human and canine osteosarcoma. The hypothesis that a cross-species approach to metastasis biology and drug development will improve outcomes has been widely discussed and adopted but has not delivered on this promise. Better alignment with the OS pediatric and comparative oncology approaches is needed to understand metastasis biology and optimize drug development. Until now, metastasectomy has rarely been performed in veterinary medicine due to the perceived invasiveness of the procedure in older large-breed dogs. Nonetheless, hints of a benefit to canine OS metastasectomy patients exist.Ethos Discovery, a non-profit incubator of scientific innovation, seeks to evolve the existing perspective regarding OS metastasis in dogs and improve the translational approach via their MIMIC (Minimally Invasive Metastasectomy in Canines) trial to create alignment of the dog model with the OS patients of highest need, those with distant metastasis. In this discussion, Dr. Thomson shares their progress and review preliminary findings from the high-level evidence Ethos-MIMIC clinical trial which suggests that there is more hope for patients than initially thought.

Osteosarcoma Webinar Series: Alexander Davies, DVM, PhD joins us on OsteoBites to discuss his work which is focused on dynamic tumor-microenvironment signaling cross-talk, signal integration, and the development of 3D organotypic and tissue models to study these interactions using live-cell microscopy techniques. Results from studies in the Davies Lab demonstrate the utility of a novel dynamic live-cell tissue model, the lungSITE model, to quantitatively measure and understand tumor signaling dynamics and behaviors within the context of the lung metastatic niche. Data obtained from this model provided new insights into how spatial position and temporal response influence signaling dynamics, specifically in osteosarcoma lung metastasis, to create intratumoral signaling heterogeneity and consequent single-cell drug response variation. Dr. Alexander Davies graduated with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a D.V.M., with an interest in comparative oncology, from the University of California, Davis. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in cancer biology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before joining The Ohio State University as faculty in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences. While at OSU he was a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center and faculty in the Cancer Biology and Cancer Engineering programs. Currently, Dr. Davies is an Assistant Professor at the Knight Cancer Institute within the Division of Oncological Sciences and Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center (CEDAR) where his work focuses on dynamic tumor-microenvironment signaling cross-talk, signal integration, and the development of 3D organotypic and tissue models to study these interactions using live-cell microscopy techniques.

Join hosts Mia and Sammy on the latest episode of osTEAo, where they dive deep into the challenges of navigating life with cancer fatigue. In "Cancer Fatigue: How to Escape the Cancerverse," they are joined by OsteoWarriors Sloane and Matthew to explore the emotional and physical toll of living in the "Cancerverse" and to share personal stories of how they find moments of normalcy amidst the chaos. From the importance of a strong support system to the little joys that help them momentarily forget their battles, this episode is a heartfelt conversation on resilience, connection, and finding light in the darkest times. Whether you're a patient, survivor, caregiver, or supporter, this episode offers insights and encouragement for anyone touched by cancer. Tune in for an honest, uplifting discussion and, as always, the latest hot goss from the osteosarcoma AYA community. Don't forget to follow MIB Agents on social media for updates and support. Thank you to the Moore Family for their generous support of our osTEAo podcast and creating a space for young adults experiencing cancer to share, relate, and heal together. More info on patient advocacy opportunities discussed in this episode Apply for the MIB Agents 2025 Junior Advisory Board! Applications are due at 11:59 PM EST on January 20th, 2025. https://forms.gle/hTCqKuPLHkntBw1U6 Share your story with our congressmen and women to advocate for several key policy issues that impact children with cancer. Join MIB Agents for Childhood Cancer Action Days on Capitol Hill, February 27-28th. Email linda@mibagents.org for more information.

Dr. Damon Reed joins us on OsteoBites to discuss the vision for research on bone tumors from the Children's Oncology Group (COG) Bone Tumor Committee. Damon Reed, MD is the inaugural Head of the Division of Pediatric Solid Tumors and Chief of the Pediatric Sarcoma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Reed founded the Sunshine Project, the Pediatric Cancer Foundation's pediatric phase 1 clinical trial consortium. This collaborative venture unites the nation's top doctors and researchers to find a faster cure for pediatric cancer. In addition, he holds leadership roles in multiple collaborative groups, including Vice Chair of the Bone Tumor Committee for the Children's Oncology Group and President of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society.

Osteosarcoma Webinar Series: Chelsey Burke, MD, a physician-scientist from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an OutSmarting Osteosarcoma Young Investigator 2024 grant recipient, shares findings from her work studying the evolution of osteosarcoma tumors. At present, we have a limited understanding of how osteosarcoma tumors change with conventional treatment and go on to develop drug resistance. Dr. Burke discusses the use of mouse models to investigate osteosarcoma tumor evolution and identify emerging resistance mechanisms that can be therapeutically targeted.Chelsey Burke, MD is an assistant attending and young investigator at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. After graduating from the University of Iowa with a B.S. in biology, Dr. Burke obtained her medical degree from St. George's University School of Medicine. Following pediatric residency at Advocate Children's Hospital in Chicago, where she served as pediatric chief resident, she joined the combined Memorial Sloan Kettering and New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell pediatric hematology and oncology fellowship program. During fellowship, Dr. Burke joined the laboratory of Dr. Filemon Dela Cruz and Dr. Andrew Kung where her research focuses on pediatric cancer modeling and preclinical drug development. Dr. Burke has a particular interest in bone sarcomas, including osteosarcoma, and is involved in the preclinical evaluation of several novel therapeutics. She hopes this work can be translated into early phase clinical trials and, ultimately, improve outcomes for children, adolescents, and young adults with high-risk sarcomas.

One of our MIB Agents OutSmarting Osteosarcoma 2024 grant recipients, Dr. Chris Richards, an Associate Professor from the University of Kentucky provides an overview of his funded work on macrophage engineered vesicles to treat pediatric osteosarcoma. This presentation focuses on the development of nanoscale vesicles derived from immune cells that can be utilized as immunomodulatory and therapeutic delivery platforms. Dr. Richards is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky where he also serves as the Director of the Light Microscopy Facility and the Director of the Bioelectronics and Nanomedicine Center. His lab has developed novel nanoscale biomaterials for therapeutic delivery and in vivo sensing within the central nervous system. Incorporating these materials with nanofabricated devices has enabled his lab to develop new platforms for interrogating biological systems in cell culture, isolated tissue, and in vivo. Research in the Richards lab also focuses on the development of ensemble and single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy techniques for the study of complex biological systems. His lab has recently applied this approach to study substance use disorders along with the development of therapeutic delivery platforms for cancer and spinal cord injury. Dr. Richards received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Maine and his PhD in physical chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was also a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech where he was also a Beckman postdoctoral Scholar.

An osteosarcoma diagnosis translates to lots of time in the hospital and an unpredictable schedule that is driven by treatment plans and unexpected complications. Spending holidays and important days in the hospital can be particularly rough. OsteoWarriors Sammy, MacKenzie, and Matthew share their hospital holiday experiences, bad and good, from nausea ruining a pumpkin pie to breaking out of the hospital to enjoy the city holiday lights and carolers. They share the little magical moments created by their hospital care teams that made it better, how spending holidays in the hospital has changed their perspective on the holidays, tips and advice for patients who might be in the hospital this upcoming holiday season, and suggestions for how family and friends can best support them with holiday cheer.

One of our MIB Agents OutSmarting Osteosarcoma Young Investigator 2024 grant recipients, Arianexys Aquino-López, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist from Texas Children's Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine will provide an overview of her funded work on Repurposing Virus Specific T cells as Immune Therapy for Osteosarcoma. In this presentation, she discusses repurposing virus-specific T cells so that they become an immune therapy for osteosarcoma. She will also describe how oncolytic virotherapy promotes immune stimulation at the tumor site increasing the anti-tumor activity of virus-specific T cells.Dr. Arianexys Aquino-López is an Instructor at the Department of Pediatrics, Section of Hematology-Oncology, Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Aquino-Lopez is committed to a career as a pediatrician-scientist with a particular interest in improving treatment options for children with cancer through the design of novel immune therapies, including cell therapies and antibody therapies. She is also interested in studying the impact of tumor microenvironment in immune suppression to develop approaches to overcome cancer immune evasion. Witnessing her brother go through pediatric cancer treatment served as an inspiration for her to study ways to improve cancer therapies.

Osteosarcoma Webinar Series: Osteosarcoma Webinar Series: One of our MIB Agents OutSmarting Osteosarcoma 2024 grant recipients, Dr. Shahana Mahajan, a Professor and Principal Investigator from Hunter College of the City University of New York will provide an overview of her funded work on repurposing drugs for metastatic osteosarcoma. Dr. Mahajan will share the recent findings from her lab on testing the efficacy of Riluzole in osteosarcoma cell lines and patient-derived cell lines. Riluzole is a glutamate-release inhibitor and has been used for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) for decades and is being tested for other neurodegenerative disorders. Riluzole has shown promising results in glutamate receptor-expressing melanoma and other cancer types. The Mahajan Lab efforts are invested in establishing Riluzole as a possible treatment option for osteosarcoma for which targeted therapy has not been successful due to lack of oncogenic driver mutations. In their lab, Riluzole has shown efficacy in inhibiting proliferation, migration, and invasive ability of osteosarcoma cells in 11 cell lines and 4 patient-derived lines. Dr. Mahajan earned a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, a premier Institute in India in the field of Molecular Biology. She did postdoctoral studies at Weill Cornell Medical College in the Department of Pharmacology and at NYU Langone Medical Center in the Department of Biochemistry. She continued her research at NYU Langone Medical Center as a Research Assistant Professor until she joined Hunter College as an Assistant Professor in 2007. At Hunter, she continued her research neuroscience to investigate glutamate-induced excitotoxicity in rat hippocampal neurons. After her lab was lost to Hurricane Sandy, she reinitiated her research in osteosarcoma. In 2015, her lab moved to Belfer Research Building which is a part of Weill Cornell Medical College. She was appointed as an adjunct faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College. After a short presentation on this research, she will take questions from attendees. Share your questions in advance with us at Christina@MIBAgents.org.

Joanne Tuohy, DVM, PhD from Virginia Tech and the Virgina-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine will be sharing information about canine trials studying histotripsy as a novel tumor ablation modality for treating osteosarcoma. Histotripsy is a focused ultrasound tumor ablation technique that is non-invasive, non-ionizing and non-thermal, and it also has potential to induce immunomodulatory effects after tumor ablation. Histotripsy is capable of delivering highly precise tumor ablation and spares normal tissues adjacent to the ablation site. Histotripsy has exciting potential to serve as a non-surgical limb salvage treatment for osteosarcoma. Additionally, due to its immunomodulatory effects, histotripsy has potential to be synergistic with immunotherapies and increase the efficacy of immunotherapies in osteosarcoma. After a short presentation on this research, she will take questions from attendees. Share your questions in advance with us at Christina@MIBAgents.org.

Get in the Halloween spirit with OsteoWarriors Mia, Sammy, Gillian, MacKenzie, and Matthew who share spooky stories from their osteosarcoma treatment experiences. Find out why being diagnosed with osteosarcoma is like entering the Twilight Zone where things may seem normal, but weird and random things lurk. Hallucinations, disorientation, and delirium can be common side effects from pain and supportive meds during treatment, making it difficult to discern reality from fantasy.  You will cringe and cackle at the haunting stories of pain meds gone wrong, from dreams filled with housework to a little man constantly appearing in the hospital room, to mysterious screams from behind a curtain. And you may even get some ideas for clever Halloween costumes.

Dr. Troy McEachron joined us on OsteoBites to discuss the molecular and cellular deconstruction of metastatic osteosarcoma. Immunotherapy holds great promise for a subset of patients whose tumors respond to this innovative and remarkable approach. The therapeutic benefit for patients with osteosarcoma has been largely underwhelming, prompting clinical, translational, and basic scientists to ask why. Dr. McEachron's laboratory is focused on understanding the oncogenic and immunoregulatory mechanisms within the metastatic osteosarcoma microenvironment and how they impact therapeutic efficacy. He discusses his lab's current work in using various -omic technologies to deconstruct metastatic osteosarcoma.Dr. McEachron earned his doctorate in Molecular and Cellular Pathology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and at the Translational Genomics Research Institute. In 2016, Dr. McEachron joined the faculty of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translational Genomics (primary appointment) and the Department of Pediatrics (secondary appointment). Dr. McEachron joined the Pediatric Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute in 2021 where he leads the Integrated Solid Tumor Biology Section. The major focus of his laboratory is to molecularly dissect the microenvironment of pediatric metastatic osteosarcoma to better understand the biology of metastatic disease and identify therapeutically actionable targets.

September marks Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and Back-to-School season. Mackenzie, Sloane, and Penelope join osTEAo host Sammy to discuss the challenges and feelings that can accompany going back to school. They share their personal stories about how their diagnoses interrupted their school and extracurricular activities, accessibility issues on campus, and resulting FOMO. Based on their own experiences, they share advice and tips for newly diagnosed AYA patients on managing school during and post-treatment. Listen in to hear these OsteoWarriors discuss how to be the best advocate for yourself and why FOMO is less about being at the club, and more about what comes next.

For decades, academic clinical trials consortia have collaborated to optimize outcomes for childhood cancers through evaluating incremental improvements in conventional multi modality treatment regimes. There are now increasing opportunities to partner with industry to test new medicines in academic-sponsored trials, but these collaborative studies rarely contribute to marketing authorizations. Under the auspices of the multistakeholder platform ACCELERATE, a working group of representatives was convened from clinical academia, the pharmaceutical industry, the European Medicines Agency, US Food and Drug Administration, and patient advocacy to explore why this is the case and to seek solutions to enable academic-sponsored trials to directly contribute to the licensing of new medicines. This presentation summarizes the group's findings and provides an industry perspective on how to move forward.Dr. Barry is a board-certified pediatrician and pediatric hematologist/oncologist with over 15 years of experience in drug development. Prior to joining Day One in 2021, she was the Global Clinical Lead for Pediatric Oncology at Pfizer, as well as Head of Pfizer's Pediatric Oncology Leadership Team where she oversaw more than 10 pediatric oncology clinical programs. She has also held previous roles at Genzyme and Millenium/Takeda focused on the development of oncology therapeutics in adults. Dr. Barry serves on the Industry Advisory Council for CureSearch and is a member of the ACCELERATE Platform Steering Committee. She is also a co-chair of the Children's Oncology Group Industry Relations Council. Dr. Barry is a graduate of the pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship program at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston, and the pediatric residency program at Tufts. She received her M.D. at Yale University School of Medicine and also obtained a Masters in Medical Science degree from Harvard Medical School.

Brigitte Brisson, DMV, DVSc, DACVS from the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph joined us on OsteoBites to introduce Magnetic Resonance guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound as a treatment modality for osteosarcoma and describe preliminary results in canine patients.High Intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a non-invasive percutaneous thermal ablation technique that allows deep tissue treatment with precise control over the shape and location of energy deposition. It causes minimal collateral damage and can be used to treat primary and metastatic tumours. In addition to its role in tumour ablation, HIFU has attracted attention for its potential to stimulate the immune system and possibly mount a response against metastasis. In humans, HIFU has been used for ablation of a variety of soft tissue tumours and most recently, it has been used in bone applications, specifically for the treatment of osteoid osteoma (OO) lesions in pediatric patients. Other reported bone applications include bone metastasis and osteosarcoma.Dr. Brigitte Brisson is a professor of soft tissue surgery in the Department of Clinical Studies at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC). She graduated from the Faculté de Médecine Vétérinaire at the University of Montreal in 1996. She performed a small animal rotating internship at the OVC followed by a Surgery residency with concurrent Doctor of Veterinary Science (DVSc) in small animal surgery. She became board certified in small animal surgery (ACVS) in 2001 and has since been on faculty at the Ontario Veterinary College. She is an ACVS Founding Fellow in Minimally Invasive Surgery and a Founding Member of Veterinary Neurosurgical Society.

This month osTEAo co-hosts Mia and Sammy are joined by OsteoWarrior Kara to tackle the ambivalent mix of emotions from good scan results. Good scans equal good vibes, right? Not necessarily. Mia, Sammy, and Kara get real about their reluctance to celebrate, the complications of sharing good news with their friends and family, and the guilt that can accompany good scan results. Like other long-term effects of cancer and treatment, the ambivalence and guilt are normal, and may never go away, but Mia, Sammy, and Kara share their personal experiences and tips for coping with the guilt, managing their loved one's expectations about scans, and balancing all the mixed emotions, which may include putting yourself out there and taking some chances, having a shot with your care team (for patients 21+ of course!), and getting a cat.

Diana Azzam, PhD joined us on OsteoBites to discuss her lab's work on functional precision medicine for the treatment of pediatric and adult cancers. This presentation describes the foundational principles of functional precision medicine as applied to pediatric cancers and how major technological improvements as well as an explosive broadening of the cancer pharmacopeia has enabled the bridging of genomics with functional drug testing as clinical decision support tools to impact patient care.Diana Azzam, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Research Director of the Center for Advancing Personalized Cancer Treatments at Florida International University. She has a Masters in Biochemistry from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and a PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of Miami, Florida. Her lab focuses on implementing functional precision medicine (FPM) approaches in adult and pediatric cancer patients that have run out of treatment options. Working with local hospitals including Nicklaus Children's Hospital and Cleveland Clinic Florida, her lab delivers individualized treatment plans based on a patient's cancer genomic profile and ex vivo drug response. She is currently engaged in two clinical studies to assess feasibility and clinical utility of FPM in relapsed/refractory patients with childhood cancer (ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT05857969) and adult cancer (ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT06024603). Dr. Azzam is working on setting up the first CLIA-certified lab in the State of Florida dedicated for functional cancer drug testing. Her goal is to launch large-scale prospective multi-center randomized clinical trials to better assess efficacy of FPM approaches in the treatment of refractory/relapsed cancers. In parallel, she is working on utilizing FPM as a tool to reduce health disparities in childhood cancer patients from minority populations. She is also integrating a novel machine learning approach to identify specific biomarkers among minority populations that can be targeted using FDA-approved drugs. Her lab also investigates cancer stem cells and how they may result from chronic environmental exposures to toxic metals such as arsenic.After a short presentation on this research, she will take questions from attendees. Share your questions in advance with us at Christina@MIBAgents.org.

Sabina Kaczanowska's research focus is to understand the role of the immune system in shaping the microenvironment of metastasis during cancer progression. Specifically, she is investigating how myeloid cells orchestrate the immunosuppressive program in the pre-metastatic niche and how we can apply this knowledge of myeloid biology to design new immunotherapeutic strategies for the treatment of solid tumors. She joined us on OsteoBites to discuss her recently published paper on Immune determinants of CAR-T cell expansion in solid tumor patients receiving GD2 CAR-T cell therapy.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38134936/Chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-Ts) have remarkable efficacy in liquid tumors, but limited responses in solid tumors. The NCI conducted a Phase I trial (NCT02107963) of GD2 CAR-Ts (GD2-CAR.OX40.28.z.iC9), demonstrating feasibility and safety of administration in children and young adults with osteosarcoma and neuroblastoma. Patient samples were evaluated by multi-dimensional proteomic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic analyses. The data uncover mediators of CAR-T biology and correlates of expansion that could be utilized to advance immunotherapies for solid tumor patients.https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02107963Dr. Sabina Kaczanowska received her Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore for her dissertation work on T-cell immunotherapy at the UM Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. She joined the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Section of the Pediatric Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral fellow in 2017 with Dr. Rosandra Kaplan. Dr. Kaczanowska was appointed as a Staff Scientist in the Pediatric Oncology Branch in 2022 to continue her work evaluating the responses of solid tumor patients to immunotherapy and translating new immuno-oncology approaches into the clinic.

Dr. Bhuvana Setty will join us on OsteoBites to discuss the role of adapting the immune system in the fight against cancer. She will discuss the ongoing study utilizing natural killer (NK) cells in combination with a chemotherapy backbone for patients with relapsed osteosarcoma and other sarcomas. She will discuss preclinical data supporting the utilization of NK cells in this patient population and discuss the goals of the clinical trial.Bhuvana Setty, MD, is a Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Her clinical interests include treating pediatric and young adult patients with bone and soft tissue sarcomas, and patients with vascular anomalies. She is the Director of the Clinical Sarcoma Team. She is the Site Principal investigator for the Sunshine Project supported by the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation and serves as the lead for the Ewing sarcoma Task Force at the Sunshine Project. In addition, she is the Site Principal Investigator for CaNVAS, the Consortium of iNvestigators for Vascular Anomalies. Her research interests include developing translational and therapeutic clinical trials with novel agents for patients with aggressive bone and soft tissue sarcomas. She leads as National PI for the TINKS trial as well as the upcoming metastatic Ewing sarcoma trial at the Children's Oncology Group.https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05634369

In this episode of osTEAo, Mia is joined by Dr. Christopher Kuo, Matt, and Valerie to discuss the often forgotten and overlooked children in an AYA cancer diagnosis - the siblings. Dr. Kuo is a physician-scientist, and pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles/USC Keck School of Medicine and he has lost two brothers, one to osteosarcoma (Stanley), during his AYA years. He recently published an article that highlights the impact of a cancer diagnosis on siblings "The unfulfilled promise from a forgotten child" which gives voice to the impact of a cancer diagnosis on siblings. Dr. Kuo, Matt, and Valerie discuss how their siblings' osteosarcoma diagnosis and ultimate passing have impacted and shaped their lives and how they manage their grief and loss and strive to maintain a sense of self. Our guests share how music, journaling, and breakdancing have helped them process their trauma and offer advice on how to best support siblings of an AYA cancer patient.Inspired by Banksy's quote - "[T]hey say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time," we continue to honor our OsteoAngels and dedicate this episode to Cecilia Nguyen, Mason Allen, Stanley Kuo, Sammy Kuo, and all the siblings and loved ones we have lost to osteosarcoma.Read Dr. Christopher Kuo's article: "The unfulfilled promise from a forgotten child"AYA Cancer Dedicated Siblings CampsArizona: Alex's Lemonade Stand Arizona Camp SidekicksCalifornia: Oncology and Kids Sibling Camp Reach for the SkyCalifornia: Camp Okizu California: Camp Ronald McDonald For Good TimesIdaho: Camp Rainbow GoldIowa: Children's Cancer Connection - Camp Heart ConnectionKentucky: Kids Cancer Alliance (Sibling Camp)Maryland: Camp Sunrise—Sun Sibs ProgramMaryland: Special Love Inc. (BRASS Camp)Montana: Camp Mak-A-Dream Siblings CampNew Mexico: Camp Enchantment; Super Stars Sibling RetreatNorth Caroline: Camp CarefreePennsylvania: Camp Can DoTexas: Camp BravoList of summer camps for AYA cancer patients and their families

Dr. Olivier Elemento joins us on OsteoBites to dive into his Lab Team's expansive precision medicine research, which combines Big Data analytics with experimentation to develop entirely new ways to help prevent, diagnose, understand, treat and ultimately cure disease. Dr. Elemento's talk will uncover the principles and applications of genomic medicine, focus on the importance of tissue architecture in disease diagnosis treatment, explore the use of patient avatars and in vitro tumor models in personalized medicine, examine ultrafast DNA sequencing, and its role in the present and future of genomic medicine, and analyze the impact of machine learning and predictive models on treatment outcomes. Dr. Elemento's revolutionary approach to cancer research utilizes high-performance computing, mathematical modeling, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to develop innovative approaches to better predict, diagnose, treat, and prevent disease to improve clinical care for every patient individually.Olivier Elemento, PhD, is a professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Since 2017, he has been the Director of the Caryl and Israel Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, a large multi-disciplinary institute that uses precision medicine technologies and informatics to uncover the molecular mechanisms of disease and individualize disease treatment and prevention. He is also the Associate Director of the Institute for Computational Medicine, Director of the Laboratory of Cancer Systems Biology, and Co-Leader of the Genetics, Epigenetics, and Systems Biology Program at the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research group combines Big Data and Artificial Intelligence with experimentation and genomic profiling to accelerate the discovery of cancer cures.

José Granados Soler, DVM, MSc, PhD and Rachel Allavena, PhD from the University of Queensland School of Veterinary Science join us on OsteoBites to discuss exploring novel immunotherapies for canine osteosarcoma. During this presentation, they delve into a pioneering clinical trial for canine osteosarcoma, share cutting-edge insights and explore how novel immunotherapies could revolutionize treatment outcomes for our furry companions. Dr. José Granados Soler, DVM, MSc, PhD serves as a small animal surgeon, educator, and researcher at The University of Queensland in Australia, collaborating with Prof. Allavena on pioneering immunotherapeutic trials for osteosarcoma and other cancers in dogs. He remains dedicated to making impactful contributions to the field, with a steadfast commitment to continuous learning and improvement.Professor Rachel Allavena is the Deputy Head of the School of Veterinary Science at The University of Queensland. She teaches toxicology, pathology, animal welfare, and laboratory animal science to science and veterinary students. Professor Allavena is a specialist veterinary anatomic pathologist and her canine trials have focused on bone cancer, melanoma, lymphoma and mastocytoma.

Matteo Trucco, MD joins us on OsteoBites to provide a preview of the FACTOR 2024 scientific panels in layperson terms with a brief overview of vocabulary and terms as a helpful resource for patients and families attending our FACTOR 2024 conference.Dr. Matteo Trucco is a pediatric oncologist caring for children, teens and young adults with sarcomas at Cleveland Clinic Children's. He also serves as Clinical Director, directs the Children's Cancer Innovative Therapy Program and co-chairs the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation's Sunshine Project consortium where he and colleagues develop and conduct clinical trials seeking more effective and less toxic treatments for childhood cancers. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Medical Degree from Temple University School of Medicine, and completed his Pediatrics Residency at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital and his Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Fellowship at Johns Hopkins and the National Cancer Institute. He is honored to be on the MIB Agents Board of Directors, chairs the MIB Agents Scientific Advisory Board, and co-chairs the organizing committee for the annual FACTOR Conference. He also has the privilege of moderating the MIB Agents Tumor Review Board for Osteosarcoma

Mia is joined by OsteoWarriors Mackenzie, Sammy, and Sean to share their experiences with long-term side effects from osteosarcoma treatment. Nausea and hair loss are well-known side effects of chemotherapy - but what are some of the side effects that linger long after chemotherapy is over? Listen in on this frank discussion on why it can feel like cancer is never done with you. The group talks about their own experiences with fatigue, hearing loss, cardiomyopathy, infertility, depression, and managing daily life with disabilities. The word balance comes up a lot in the conversation - and the group also talks about their favorite self-care techniques that help them through "mourning the person I used to be and trying to embrace the person I've become."

Dr. Amy LeBlanc is a board-certified veterinary oncologist, Senior Scientist and Director of the CCR Comparative Oncology Program at the National Cancer Institute, NIH. In this position, she directly oversees and manages the operations of the Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium (COTC), which designs and executes clinical trials of new cancer therapies in tumor-bearing pet dogs. She joins us on OsteoBites to discuss findings as we work toward genomic and transcriptional profiling of canine osteosarcoma and how the results relate to human osteosarcoma. The DOG2 project was launched to better understand the relationships between the disease in dogs and humans -- all to make it better for all patients, be they 2-legged or 4 legged!

Sibylle Mittnacht, PhD discusses the current landscape of PARP inhibitor use in cancers and osteosarcoma and discusses preclinical evidence and translation of biomarker-driven use of therapeutics in osteosarcoma. Dr. Mittnacht heads the laboratory of Cancer Cell Signalling at the University College London (UCL) Cancer Institute, with a long-standing interest in concepts that drive tumour development and therapy response in cancer. She acts as the cancer expert for the Royal College of Radiologists and is a founding member of the FOSTER (Fight Osteosarcoma Through European Research) initiative, where she co-leads the cell model and drug response focus groups and is a participant in a newly established initiative, icure, which aims to establish a living biobank and therapeutics assessment pipeline for rare and ultrarare cancers.Work in the Mittnacht team centers on understanding how cell cycle checkpoint aberrations affect the behaviour of cancer cells and the identification of therapeutic opportunity that arises therefrom. The team uses functional genomics and chemical biology to discover new treatment paradigms with a current focus on unmet needs in sarcoma and breast cancer, and is involved in establishing patient-derived and tissue-mimetic preclinical cancer models for these cancers, in order to accelerate therapeutic discovery.

Kristen VanHeyst, DO from UH Rainbows Babies and Children's Hospital discusses and shares updates regarding a Phase I/II multi-centered, multi-continental trial, to assess the safety and efficacy of Vactosertib in adolescents and adults with recurrent, refractory or progressive osteosarcoma.Dr. Kristen VanHeyst is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist and a translational therapeutics-oriented physician scientist. She completed her clinical fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology in 2019 and was appointed Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine at that time. She has been a member of the Alex Huang, MD, PhD laboratory since 2017. Dr. VanHeyst has focused her research efforts on understanding the role of the tumor microenvironment in osteosarcoma and how immunotherapy could be a novel therapeutic option for patients with this disease. Additionally, she is the Principal Investigator of a Phase I/II investigator initiated clinical trial at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. She is also the Principal Investigator of a Phase I/II multi-centered, multi-continental clinical trial designed in collaboration with MedPacto, Inc for patients with relapsed/refractory osteosarcoma.  For these efforts, she was the recipient of an NIH K12 award as well as multiple foundation awards from Hyundai Hope on Wheels, MIB Agents, CureSearch and CURE Childhood Cancer. She is currently a member of the Children's Oncology Group Bone Tumor Committee.LMAdd a comment

Camille and Mia are joined by OsteoWarriors Elise, Penelope, Sammy and Sloane to share their experiences and tips for traveling after limb salvage surgery, amputation, and/or during treatment. They discuss navigating the airport, what the deal is with wheelchairs at the aiport, getting through TSA with a prosthesis, how to find leg room in cramped airplanes and cars, managing public transportation, tips for flying, and traveling outside the US.  Aside from learning some practical tips to make traveling a bit easier, you'll laugh at some of the travel horror stories, and get advice on how to handle Uber drivers that like to dispense medical advice, funny looks when using a wheelchair or grabbing a disabled seat, and other awkward situations.

Kevin Campbell, MD, a pediatric oncologist at Children's Mercy Kansas City and Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine discusses results from the Phase 1 study assessing the safety and toxicity of cabozantinib in combination with topotecan and cyclophosphamide for relapsed osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma.Dr. Kevin Campbell is a pediatric oncologist at Children's Mercy Kansas City and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine.  He has an interest in clinical trials relevant to children with solid tumors, with an emphasis on neuroblastoma and sarcomas. During his training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Boston Children's Hospital and now extending into his career as an attending, his research focuses on clinical outcomes for patients with high-risk or advanced solid tumors and the development and implementation of early phase clinical trials with novel agents or combinations of agents to improve outcomes.His work to advance clinical trials includes experience in multiple spheres.  He has completed specific training in the writing, development and management of early phase clinical trials and currently has a phase I clinical trial open which he developed. His work also involves the analysis of biomarkers that have been incorporated into national phase II and phase III clinical trials.

Rachel Offenbacher, MD, is an attending physician at Children's Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM) and Assistant Professor, Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, Marrow and Blood Cell Transplantation at Montefiore Einstein. She joins us on OsteoBites to share her work on targeting urea cycle dysfunction to prevent and treat osteosarcoma metastasis.Since joining the Montefiore team, Dr. Offenbacher's clinical focus has been pediatric sarcomas. As a member of a translational sarcoma research lab, Dr. Offenbacher is fascinated by the ability to explore the biological processes behind novel therapeutic approaches before they are used in the clinic. Her research focuses on utilizing difluoromethylornithine to prevent and treat metastatic osteosarcoma. She has seen impressive results in her in vitro and in vivo models and is working to initiate a clinical trial. She is simultaneously working on a project funded by the American Association of Cancer Research, Targeting the Tumor Microenvironment of Metastasis to Treat Metastatic Ewing Sarcoma, which is demonstrating promising results. Dr. Offenbacher's work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and presented nationally and internationally. Dr. Offenbacher is board certified in General Pediatrics by the American Board of Pediatrics. She is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Association for Cancer Research, the Children's Oncology Group and the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. Dr. Offenbacher is also an active member of the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation. In 2020 and 2022, she won the Leo M. Davidoff Society Teaching Award; in 2022, she won the Pediatric Research Day Oral Presentation Award from CHAM. Dr. Offenbacher is a volunteer pediatric oncologist at Camp Simcha, a residential camp for children with cancer.

Camille and Mia are joined by OsteoWarriors Jasmine, Penelope and Walker to share their experiences with local control strategies to remove osteosarcoma lung metastasis, including surgery, radiation therapy, and cryoablation. They cover everything from their reaction to hearing they needed a lung surgery, how they prepared for surgery - both mentally and pro tips for how to make yourself comfortable in the hospital, managing their pain and nausea post surgery, recovery time for the different types of procedures, and their individual outcomes post procedure. In addition to hearing about their personal experiences, you'll learn about the power of escapism TV, why a spirometer can be scary, the wonders of a Da Vinci robot, and the technical term for stabby-stabby, freezy-freezy

Donghan “Mo” Yang, PhD, is a researcher in the field of data science and health informatics.  He joins us on OsteoBites to introduce the development of the Osteosarcoma Explorer (OSE), a data commons with clinical, genomic, protein, and tissue imaging data for osteosarcoma research. The OSE is one of the flagship projects cultivated within the CPRIT-funded Pediatric Cancer Data Core (Director: Yang Xie, PhD, Professor and Associate Dean of Data Science, UT Southwestern). The goal of the OSE project is to integrate publicly available and institutional osteosarcoma data of various types and share them with the research community via an interactive web interface. The OSE web portal is now accessible to the public at https://datacommons.swmed.edu/cce/ose.Dr. Yang is an Assistant Professor and a Texas Health Resources Clinical Scholar in the Quantitative Biomedical Research Center at Peter O'Donnell Jr. School of Public Health, UT Southwestern Medical Center. He also serves as the Director of Biostatistics and Data Science Core at UT Southwestern. Dr. Yang's research focuses on developing methods, platforms, and infrastructure for the management, integration, and analysis of real-world healthcare data, including electronic health records, imaging, and molecular profiling data. He has led team efforts of building data commons – comprehensive database interfaced by user-friendly web portal – for adult and childhood cancers and other diseases. He also applies advanced analytics to gain insights from these real-world data resources.

Jennifer Mack, MD, MPH from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Boston Children's and Harvard Medical School join us on OsteoBites to discuss best practices for engaging patients in research and clinical trials. Dr. Mack is also part of the PE-CGS Network (Participant Engagement and Cancer Genome Sequencing) Count Me In Research Center team and she will be discussing reasons that patients may or may not want to participate in research, ways to engage patients in designing and carrying out trials., and Count Me In as one model for engaging patients.Dr. Mack received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1998. She subsequently completed her residency in Pediatrics and her fellowship in Pediatric Hematology Oncology at Boston Children's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. In 2005, Dr. Mack received a Master's Degree in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is an attending physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children's Hospital, Director of the Center for Outcomes and Policy Research at Dana-Farber, Associate Chief of the Division of Population Sciences at Dana-Farber, Associate Chief for Pediatric Oncology Population Sciences at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's, and Faculty Vice President for the Office for Faculty Development, Professionalism, and Inclusion at Dana-Farber. She is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Her research interests are in parent-clinician and patient-clinician communication, health care equity and quality, and palliative care.

Fan Yang, PhD is an Associate Professor at Stanford University with joint appointments in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering joins OsteoBites to discuss her work on tissue engineering strategies for elucidating OS biology and drug discovery.Fan Yang, PhD is the founder and Director of Stanford Stem Cells and Biomaterials Engineering Laboratory, and also Co-director of Stanford NIH Biotechnology Training Program. Her research seeks to develop hydrogels with unique micro- and nano- scale properties to promote stem cell differentiation, tissue regeneration and immunomodulation, with a focus on musculoskeletal diseases. Her lab also harnesses biomaterials to create 3D cancer models with in vivo-mimicking phenotype and drug responses. Such 3D models could enable discovering novel druggable targets that would otherwise be missed using conventional 2D culture, and enable high-throughput drug screening with reduced cost and time than animal models. Prior to joining Stanford, Dr. Yang received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT under Prof. Robert Langer. In recognition of her innovation, she has been recognized by numerous awards including Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, MIT TR35 Global list honoree, National Science Foundation CAREER award, Young Investigator Award from Society for Biomaterials, Biomaterials Science Lectureship Award, Young Investigator award from Alliance for Cancer and Gene Therapy, Ellen Weaver Award by the Association for Women in Science, Baxter Faculty Scholar Award, the McCormick Faculty Award, Stanford Asian American Faculty Award, and the Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Award, etc.

Dr. David Shulman is a pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He studies novel therapies and biomarkers for patients with advanced sarcomas. In addition to early phase clinical trials, Dr. Shulman co-leads an effort to evaluate circulating tumor DNA, a type of "liquid biopsy," as a potential tool to improve the ways in which we treat patients with bone and soft tissue sarcomas. He joins us on OsteoBites to discuss the LEOPARD Study: Liquid Biopsy in Ewing sarcoma and Osteosarcoma as a Prognostic And Response Diagnostic

A cancer diagnosis and the treatment that follows can trigger stress and anxiety. Camille is joined this week by Dr. Abby Rosenberg, an expert in helping AYA cancer patients manage stress. They chat about why being diagnosed as an adolescent/young adult has particular challenges, tools and techniques for managing stress, and how palliative care is different from hospice care (spoiler alert - it's not just for end of life care!). Listen in to learn why stress is normal, the three categories of resilience resources, the power of distraction, the benefit of emotions, and how palliative care helps the entire care team focus on what is important to the patient. Abby R. Rosenberg, MD, MS, MA, joined the team at Boston Children's Hospital as the Director of Palliative Care in 2023. She is also the Chief of Pediatric Palliative Care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Prior to that, she was at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital, where she served as the Director of Survivorship and Outcomes Research and Director of Pediatrics at the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence. Both Dr. Rosenberg's clinical approach and her research focus on helping people facing serious illness to live their best lives, for as long as possible. Specifically, she and her team develop programs that help patients and families build resilience and optimize their quality of life.

David Freyer, DO, MS provides a review of hearing loss as a serious and permanent side effect caused by cisplatin chemotherapy, recent research regarding its prevention, and its relevance for young people treated for osteosarcoma.David R. Freyer, DO, MS is Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Medicine, and Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He currently serves as Director of the Survivorship and Supportive Care Program in the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and as Director of the Cancer Survivorship Program and Co-Director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Program, both at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Freyer's clinical care and research are concentrated in cancer survivorship, cancer control/supportive care, and AYA oncology with interests in treatment-related toxicity, survivorship care transition, cancer care disparities, and patient-reported outcomes. He had the privilege of leading ACCL0431, a randomized Children's Oncology Group study and pivotal trial leading to FDA approval of sodium thiosulfate as the first proven agent to prevent cisplatin-induced hearing loss in young people treated for cancer.