Oral cancer in Fanconi patients is a severe disease requiring innovative treatment and prevention measures. The potential use of FDA-approved diabetes drugs is a practical strategy for Fanconi patients for oral cancer prevention or treatment studies, once these preliminary studies are conducted. The…
Grant description: Persons with FA, as well as their family members, voice concern about being underweight and unable to build muscle mass. These concerns have an obvious physical impact, not only on the person's appearance to others and themselves and the negative impact on immune function and host…
FA confers a high risk of developing leukemia at a young age, and patients with FA who develop leukemia are difficult to treat with have poor long-term outcomes. Leukemia develops as a consequence of the acquisition of genetic mutations within blood stem cells in the bone marrow that cooperate to dr…
Head and neck cancer is a major issue for the FA population. There is no suitable preclinical model to study potential strategies for preventing or delaying squamous cell carcinoma in FA. Using a cancer-prone mouse model developed by a lab in the United Kingdom, researchers will test small molecules…
Grant description: Treatment of blood complications in FA kids using bone marrow transplantation has seen great improvement over the past decade. However, after a successful bone marrow transplantation, those kids affected with FA must now face nonblood malignancies in subsequence adolescent life wh…
Grant description Bone marrow transplantation has been used for 60+ years to treat >1,000,000 patients suffering from many types of blood or immune diseases, and this therapy is the best current treatment for FA patients experiencing blood problems. This procedure relies on replacing sick blood-form…
Fanconi Anemia (FA) is characterized by fragile bone marrow and the inability to repair DNA damage which accumulates in repopulating stem cells, leading to marrow failure. Current treatments often involve bone marrow transplantation however the majority of patients will not have an appropriately mat…
Fanconi anemia patients are dramatically predisposed to early-onset and aggressive head, neck, and anogenital squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Treating Fanconi SCCs is challenging due to high-frequency recurrence and patient chemosensitivity, yielding an average survival rate of
Grant description: Low blood counts due to bone marrow failure are a common complication of Fanconi anemia (FA) which affect health and quality of life. Metformin improves blood counts in mice with FA and may protect against DNA damage. Laboratory studies suggest that Metformin may be protective aga…
Excessive toxicity from chemotherapy and radiation makes treatment for SCC in FA quite challenging and leads to dismal outcomes, in fact fatal outcomes in most patients. Thus, there is clearly a need for a new approach both for prevention and/or treatment that has fewer and less severe side effects.…
Eighty percent of FA patients survive beyond age 20, carry a high risk for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the oropharyngeal and anogenital regions connected with high morbidity and mortality. In addition to intrinsic genetic instability, HSCT and a number of other factors contribute to the pathoge…
Fanconi anemia (FA) patients are at exceptionally high risk of developing epithelial cancers. We aim to identify features of these cancers that provide new insight into their origins, and better ways to treat these cancers in the context of FA patients. As part of this Resource we will develop and c…