2020 Funding Priorities
At Climb For Hope, we view the funds we raise as “angel investing” for cancer and MS research, because we support early stage research for which researchers often struggle to obtain funding.
Graduate Student Beza Woldemeskel, studying how breast cancers metastasize, or spread to form new tumors in other organs.
Understanding Cancer Metastasis
This year, Climb For Hope will again support the work of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, under the direction of Dr. Andrew Ewald, Professor of Cell Biology and Co-Director of the Cancer Invasion and Metastasis Program.
Metastasis is the central problem in cancer, as more than 90% of cancer deaths occur at metastatic stages and few therapies are effective in this setting.
The Kimmel Cancer Center recently discovered that breast cancer cells use a common set of molecular tools to invade out of the tumor (Cell 2013) and that these cancer cells travel in groups as they spread through the body (PNAS 2016).
Current research focuses on understanding how adhesive molecular connections between cancer cells allow them to survive and grow. Recent work from the lab has shown that deletion of a gene encoding this molecular “velcro” causes breast cancer cells to die and blocks metastatic spread.
Funds raised this year by Climb for Hope will support the research of Beza Woldemeskel, a student in the Johns Hopkins Cellular and Molecular Medicine Ph.D. Program. Her project seeks to understand how the protein E-cadherin mediates essential survival signals for cancer cells. This work involves making specific changes in the protein sequence to identify which regions are most important. We anticipate that this research will lead to an understanding of how to disrupt these survival signals and kill breast cancer cells wherever they are in the body.
Myelin Repair in Multiple Sclerosis
This year, Climb For Hope will again support the work of The Johns Hopkins Multiple Sclerosis Center, lead by Dr. Peter Calabresi, Professor of Neurology and Director of Neuroimmunology.
Nearly one million people in the U.S. have Multiple Sclerosis (MS), an incurable neurological condition that affects the myelin coating around nerves in the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. The 20 FDA approved treatments for MS mostly work to slow progression of the disease. There are currently no treatments to repair myelin and help people regain function.
The Johns Hopkins MS Center research team is focused on finding a treatment to repair the myelin around damaged nerves and help people with MS regain function. The goal is to utilize recent technological advances to determine if myelin-producing oligodendrocyte precursor cells derived from people with MS can survive under threatening conditions and differentiate into oligodendrocyte cells.
Funds raised by Climb For Hope this year will support experiments using a new technology called Single Cell RNAseq, which allows researchers to interrogate the RNA program within thousands of cells. We will compare the RNA signals from MS brain tissues to those we model in the lab, to determine if we can deduce what went wrong in people with MS. This approach allows identification of new pathways that can be targeted for new drug therapies.