Innovative research harnessing the Zika virus to destroy certain cancers is getting a “significant” boost through a $7 million donation to Nemours Children’s Health.
The gift from the Pass It on to Kids Foundation, announced Tuesday, will also support the pediatric hospital system’s music therapy program.
“Breakthroughs that begin in Nemours Children’s Health laboratories require support like this so that our scientists can continue innovating to achieve lifesaving cancer treatments,” Dr. Matthew M. Davis, Nemours’ executive vice president, said in a statement.
The donation will fund work by the teams of infectious disease division chief Dr. Kenneth Alexander and assistant professor of surgery Dr. Tamarah Westmoreland. Both physician-researchers are on faculty at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine.
Alexander and fellow researchers are working to implement the first-in-human trial of Zika virus to treat women with advanced ovarian cancer who do not respond to other therapies.
In recent years, researchers have discovered that virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, can be used to kill cancer cells. Zika infections in pregnant women can cause serious birth defects as the virus targets CD24, a developmental protein. Certain cancers expressing CD24 are also vulnerable to the virus.
Meantime, Westmoreland explains in published research that injecting neuroblastoma tumors with the virus shrank or eliminated those tumors in mice.
Neuroblastoma is a rare childhood cancer that typically develops in the sympathetic nervous system or the adrenal glands. Although it only accounts for 6 percent childhood cancer diagnoses, high-risk neuroblastoma causes 15 percent of childhood cancer deaths, according to the researchers.
“More than half of patients with high-risk neuroblastoma do not respond to chemotherapy or radiation,” Westmoreland said.
The Vero Beach-based Pass It on to Kids Foundation has contributed more than $13.4 million to Nemours over the past five years.
“This significant donation will enable us to advance critical, promising research that could provide novel treatment options for hard-to-treat cancers in the future,” Davis said.
Nemours operates children’s hospitals in Orlando and Wilmington, Delaware. It also has facilities and partnerships in Jacksonville and other parts of Florida, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
