Dinorah Friedmann-Morvinski, PhD

Dinorah Friedmann-Morvinski, PhD, of Tel Aviv University, the first recipient of the ICRF Special Initiative in Pediatric Cancer Research Grant, is trying to improve treatment strategies for pediatric high-grade gliomas — very aggressive, universally fatal, pediatric brain tumors. One promising modality is genetically modifying the patient’s T cells (a type of cell in our immune system) to express chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that can recognize and bind to molecules expressed on tumor cells and kill them. This modality has induced long-lasting remission in most patients with B cell malignancies (cancers of white blood cells), including pediatric patients. In this project, she aims to extend the potential of CAR T cell therapy to pediatric brain tumors and to overcome some of the major obstacles to the effectiveness of this strategy.

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