Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer in children and young adults. While this bone cancer is rare in adults, it ranks only behind lymphomas and brain tumors as the most prevalent childhood solid tumor. With the introduction of surgery and chemotherapy, the survival of osteosarcoma patients has dramatically improved since the 1980s. Nonetheless, advances in improving the prognosis of the patients with this childhood cancer have not improved over the past three decades. In particular, the survival for patients with metastatic disease is still poor with a five-year survival rate below 20% under the current standard of care. Since a metastasis-specific regimen is not available, all patien...

Read More

Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer in children and young adults. While this bone cancer is rare in adults, it ranks only behind lymphomas and brain tumors as the most prevalent childhood solid tumor. With the introduction of surgery and chemotherapy, the survival of osteosarcoma patients has dramatically improved since the 1980s. Nonetheless, advances in improving the prognosis of the patients with this childhood cancer have not improved over the past three decades. In particular, the survival for patients with metastatic disease is still poor with a five-year survival rate below 20% under the current standard of care. Since a metastasis-specific regimen is not available, all patients are treated with the same standardized chemotherapy regardless of their clinical risks. The consensus within the field is building that a better understanding of metastasis development may hold the key for new therapeutic advancements. To address this unmet need, our laboratory has shown that specific chemokines are involved in the development of osteosarcoma metastasis. Chemokines are a class of important extracellular signaling molecules that have been implicated in cancer and metastasis. Hence, the objective of this study is to examine the roles of a chemokine named CXCL10 with respect to metastasis in osteosarcoma. The long-term goal of our study is to improve the prognosis for osteosarcoma patients by developing new treatments that can terminate key metastatic processes. Inhibitors of the CXCL10-associated pathways are available for preclinical testing, and new and effective inhibitors are being developed. Thus, we believe that the proposed study will yield novel and significant results that carry a high potential to be translated into more effective therapies for patients with metastatic osteosarcoma.

Read Less