The Lyla Nsouli Foundation is proud to announce the award of a US$114,670 grant to Dr Mark Souweidane at the Joan & Sanford Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

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In clinical trials for children with DIPG, length of survival has served as the only measure of therapeutic benefit. This outcome measure is reasonable assuming the entire tumour is equally affected by drug delivery. However, distribution of a therapeutic compound delivered by CED is expected to have some variability within a defined volume. The study's hypothesis is that DIPG tumour response will occur on a regional and variable basis after being treated with CED. To test this hypothesis a reliable method must be devised that offers an objective measurement of response within different zones of each individual tumour. Measuring DIPG response has thus far been problematic since these tumours do not typically exhibit contrast enhancement and tumour volume is difficult to define, two parameters commonly used for other brain tumour response assessments. Without a means for assessing early therapeutic response, potential beneficial strategies that employ local delivery may be masked and inaccurately be abandoned. To date, no method has been developed to measure regional tumour responses as a function of local therapeutic delivery. Assessing intratumoral response will play a critical role in defining future CED parameters, including anatomic targets, infusion rates, durations, and volumes. The intent of this proposal is to design a reliable method by which tumour response can be measured on a regional intratumoral basis and to merge this response information with an assessment of drug distribution.