WHO WE ARE
Families Powering Pediatric AML Research is a family-led initiative created to help families understand pediatric AML, find promising research and connect with people and organizations working to move that research forward.
We share research updates, family stories and opportunities to get involved while helping connect families, foundations, researchers and supporters around a common goal: moving promising pediatric AML research toward better treatments for children.
IT STARTED WITH FAMILIES
Our story begins with Project Stella, created by Casey and Jed Novotny in memory of their daughter Stella. What began as one family's determination to create something meaningful from an unimaginable loss grew into a collaboration of families, foundations and donors supporting Dr. Soheil Meshinchi's research into CBF-GLIS AML at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
Beginning in 2018, that support helped accelerate the discovery and development of FOLR1-targeted CAR T-cell therapy for this particularly rare and aggressive form of pediatric AML.
We were fortunate to become part of that effort and to see what could happen when people came together around promising science.
What we learned from Project Stella is that when a child or loved one is diagnosed with pediatric AML, families need to know where to turn. Promising research and potential answers may exist, but families need help finding them—and in a disease like pediatric AML, moving quickly can make all the difference.
Families Powering Pediatric AML Research was created to help families find that information, understand the research underway, and see what can happen when families, researchers and supporters work together with urgency.
Project Stella continues at Fred Hutch and remains Stella's legacy. Families Powering Pediatric AML Research draws on what we learned from that experience to help families find information, understand promising research and connect with efforts that could benefit more children with pediatric AML.
*Pictured: Novotny family, Siders family, Stella's aunt, Carryn, & Dr. Soheil Meshinchi meet for the first time in person at the Summit.
BUT CBF-GLIS IS ONLY ONE OF MANY FORMS OF PEDIATRIC AML
There are other children with other forms of AML still waiting for the discoveries and better treatments they desperately need.
What Project Stella demonstrated for one rare form of pediatric AML raises a larger question: could that same family-powered approach help promising research reach more children?
FAMILIES POWERING PEDIATRIC AML RESEARCH
