Funding to Tackle Children's Blood Cancers, One Fish at a Time
Childhood cancer research faces a significant funding gap compared to research for adult cancers. St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a national charitable organization, seeks to fill that gap through its awarding of grants to promising researchers. This year, the foundation awarded $22 million worldwide; among grant recipients was Dr. Arpan Sinha, a third-year fellow in pediatric hematology/oncology at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM).
Arpan Sinha, M.D.Dr. Sinha’s grant supports her research of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a blood disorder that causes anemia and other problems related to a loss of blood cells and often leads to acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the second most common blood cancer in children. Nearly 4 in 10 children diagnosed with AML will die from the disease.
Dr. Sinha came to CHAM in 2014, following a residency and chief residency in pediatrics at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. “My interest in pediatrics was inspired by my own pediatrician,” she said. “I knew early on that I wanted to work with children.”
Last year, Dr. Sinha began collaboration with Dr. Teresa Bowman, assistant professor of developmental & molecular biology and of medicine at Einstein, to study MDS in zebrafish.
Why zebrafish? As described in the latest Einstein magazine, zebrafish share 70 percent of their genes with humans. Their embryos develop much faster, though, making it easier to study blood disorders.
“The blood system actually develops within 24 hours, so you can perform a lot of experiments just using these embryos,” Dr. Sinha explained.
Some genetic mutations in zebrafish produce symptoms similar to MDS. Dr. Sinha is focusing her studies on Chd1, a gene commonly misregulated in MDS patients. Since it’s not known whether Chd1 causes similar problems in zebrafish, Dr. Sinha spent the last year creating a zebrafish model that lacks a working copy of the gene.
“There was no zebrafish model that existed for this gene, so I had to start from scratch,” she said.
The grant from St. Baldrick’s provides two full years of support for Dr. Sinha, allowing her to dedicate time toward better understanding how Chd1 misregulation lead to MDS and AML. This, in turn, could point to improved diagnoses or treatment methods going forward.
In the meantime, the work has already had an impact on her clinical practice. “I’ve gained a deeper understanding of what causes MDS/AML that I see in clinic,” she said. “It’s also given me a sense of how the work that Dr. Bowman and I are doing can have a more global benefit in the future.”
Editor’s Note: To read more about research with zebrafish at Einstein, see the latest issue of Einstein magazine.
Posted on: Tuesday, November 01, 2016