Two researchers at Kennedy Krieger Institute have received $5.5 million to start an innovative three-year neurorehabilitation program aimed at improving the brain health of pediatric cancer patients with brain tumors.
The goal of the program is to implement individualized and adaptive interventions to help pediatric cancer patients improve brain health, from the time of diagnosis through long-term survivorship. The interventions are designed to proactively strengthen brain structure and functioning, as attention and thinking speed are commonly affected in children with brain tumors, including during survivorship.
An anonymous donor family interested in investing in pediatric cancer care and survivorship provided the funds for this innovative project, which will be led at Kennedy Krieger by Stacy Suskauer, MD, vice president of rehabilitation, and Rachel Peterson, PhD, ABPP, a neuropsychologist. The funding is part of the donor family’s $40 million investment in cancer care supporting a collaboration that includes the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Radiation Oncology Research Center at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. Other researchers—from Children’s National Hospital, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Massachusetts General Hospital—will participate in related research.