CBTN Cell Lines High-Throughput Drug Screening Study (NCATS)

While the understanding of pediatric brain cancers has grown over time, there are still very limited options for targeted treatments. One reason for this is the inefficiency of current analysis methods and a lack of centralization of such data for rare pediatric brain tumors. Here, researchers propose a collaborative effort with the National Center For Advancing Translational Studies (NCATS). This work will utilize a high volume screening approach that will find novel drug possibilities by testing the CBTN tumor models. Through automated robotic screening, the technology interrogates the drug dose-response relationship with speed and accuracy. As the ultimate goal, this project will provide extensive drug response information from over 1,000 FDA approved drugs across multiple pediatric tumor diagnoses, guiding clinical decision making. The generated data will create a baseline to explore new tumor specific biomarkers/signaling pathways as drug targets. The data generated will utilize rare cell lines provided by the Children’s Brain Tumor Network (CBTN), and all data will be returned to CBTN and available for researchers without restrictions.