$2.67M to Study Pediatric Brain Tumor Treatments
Thursday, July 2, 2026
The National Cancer Institute awarded a five-year, $2.67 million grant to researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) for a project to develop and study novel treatments for childhood brain cancer, led by University of Illinois Cancer Center member Tohru Yamada, PhD. The Cancer Center is part of UIC and its academic health enterprise, UI Health.
The project, featured in UIC Today, will develop a cancer-targeting peptide that is fine-tuned to shrink brain tumors in pediatric patients.
There is currently no FDA-approved drug on the market to treat pediatric high-grade gliomas, which are tumors originating in the brain and spinal cord. These tumors are the leading cause of cancer death in all patients age 19 and younger.
“Although they’re both called brain cancer, pediatric brain cancer and adult brain cancer are not the same on the molecular level,” Yamada told UIC Today.
