Accomplishments
The James Fund is the largest umbrella organization for neuroblastoma families in Canada, and our reach extends into the US and around the globe. Our research has taken the top two prizes for neuroblastoma in the world, and we are responsible for some of the most promising work in the field.
We fund pilot data and research no one else will fund, and we accelerate the process from fund-raising to clinical trials.
Along the way, The James Fund has:
- Funded 17 projects and had 25 published articles in leading medical journals
- Funded a joint postdoctoral fellow between SickKids and the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City to perform collaborative neuroblastoma research
- Attracted a fellow from Australia’s most famous neuroblastoma group
- Entered a prestigious Canada-wide partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to jointly fund postdoctoral fellows working on neuroblastoma
- Initiated a collaborative project between SickKids (represented by Dr. Kaplan) and Japan’s foremost neuroblastoma researcher
- Funded a joint neuroblastoma project between SickKids and researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard and the National Institutes of Health in Maryland
- Funded a new drug discovery program for neuroblastoma in partnership with the Stem Cell Network Centre for Excellence
- Become a member of NANT, New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy, a consortium of 13 universities and children’s hospitals in the USA dedicated to neuroblastoma research and treatment. The James Fund is the first group outside of the USA to be included in this group
- Been appointed to represent Canada on the Advances in Neuroblastoma Research (ANR) group, an elite international think tank of neuroblastoma scientists dedicated to raising the bar on neuroblastoma research globally
- Been awarded the top prize for neuroblastoma research at the 2008 Advances of Neuroblastoma Research Conference in Japan, for discovering the stem cell of neuroblastoma
- Created and funded research projects across Canada and in the USA, Japan, Sweden, England, Belgium, Hong Kong and Italy
- Sequenced the DNA of the neuroblastoma stem cell at the internationally-acclaimed Genome Science Centre in Vancouver
- Begun a Phase I clinical trial at sites throughout North America of two agents, Vinblastine and Rapamycin, which killed neuroblastoma stem cells in the laboratory.
Since its humble roots in 2001, The James Fund has become one of the best hopes children fighting neuroblastoma have.
