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.

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 [email protected].

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 [email protected].

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.