Our program is committed to the development of new knowledge to improve the care of children and adolescents with blood disorders and cancer. Our spectrum of research and investigations ranges from the bench to the beside.
The Children’s Hospital Foundation Pediatric Cancer Program supports five $2 million endowed chairs conducting basic, laboratory, and clinical investigations. Our section head, Dr. William H. Meyer, holds the CMRI Ben Johnson Chair. He is an internationally recognized expert in pediatric sarcomas and has previously chaired the Soft Tissue Sarcoma Committee of COG. J. Kimble Frazer, MD, PhD, the CMRI E.L. and Thelma Gaylord Chair, uses a zebrafish model to help uncover the genes involved with T-cell cancers.
Our department is an active member of the Children’s Oncology Group, the largest international cooperative conducting clinical therapeutic research in children and adolescents with cancer, and has consistently ranked in the top quartile for enrollments. We were a founding member of the Texas-Oklahoma Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (TOPNOC), committed to clinical and translational research to improve the outcome for children with brain tumors. We are also active participants in the Southern Plains Oncology Consortium, a regional consortium conducting early phase oncology trials and translational cancer research. We also conduct clinical trials in hemophilia and sickle cell anemia.
In addition to philanthropic support from Children’s Hospital Foundations, we actively participate and receive grant support from CureSearch, St. Baldrick’s Foundation, and the Hyundai Hope on Wheels, and a yearly fund-raiser conducted by the OU Volleyball program honoring Javi Restrepo.