The Children’s Brain Tumor Project Foundation provides funding for cutting-edge personalized medicine to children and adolescents with brain tumors at Weill Cornell Medicine. The team of scientists at the Weill Cornell Pediatric Brain and Spine Center — including surgeons, molecular geneticists, pathologists, and bioinformatics researchers — focuses on rare tumors that are often neglected by other researchers due to the small numbers of cases. But for families struggling with these diagnoses, research studies to find these personalized treatments are a matter of life and death.

The Children’s Brain Tumor Project Foundation, formerly known as Elizabeth’s Hope, is a nonprofit organization that funds pediatric brain tumor research at Weill Cornell Medicine. In 2022, the organization announced the new name as a reflection of its expanded mission, which welcomes an expanded team of leadership and supporters who have been impacted by a pediatric brain tumor diagnosis and wanted to get involved. 

Elizabeth Minter created Elizabeth’s Hope after she was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor at the age of 19. That local fundraising initiative grew to become a certified nonprofit organization and the cornerstone for launching a pediatric brain tumor research laboratory called the Children’s Brain Tumor Project at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. The Children’s Brain Tumor Project Foundation exclusively funds this lab. 

The lab is led by Dr. Mark Souweidane, Vice Chairman, Department of Neurological Surgery, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine, and Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield, Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery and Pediatrics, Vice Chairman of Academic Affairs, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. The project started more than a decade ago with a handful of experiments at cluttered borrowed benches in other labs. It has since grown into a team of 20 neuroscientists and technicians who work in a dedicated lab space at Weill Cornell Medicine. The team has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and brought five clinical trials to fruition, bringing new treatment options to children in the clinic. 

“Almost ninety percent of our research is funded by families and family- founded nonprofits who have been impacted by a pediatric brain tumor diagnosis, many of whom were my patients, including Elizabeth,” said Dr. Greenfield. “That brings a tremendous sense of purpose, urgency, and accountability to our work.” 

Moving forward, the Children’s Brain Tumor Project Foundation remains committed to funding the groundbreaking research at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Children’s Brain Tumor Project. The two initiatives share the same single goal: to bring hope to children and their families who are confronted with the diagnosis of a rare brain tumor. 

The Children’s Brain Tumor Project is a research lab at the Weill Cornell Pediatric Brain and Spine Center, co-directed by Dr. Mark Souweidane and Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield. The team studies rare brain tumors that affect children and young adults such as gliomatosis cerebri, thalamic gliomas, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), ATRT, ETMR, choroid plexus carcinoma, craniopharyngioma, and ependymoma. The lab team focuses on studying these tumor types because they are most often neglected in the research landscape due to the lack of funding and support that research scientists need to find cures.

Discovering new information about any specific cancer enables the development of new treatment options. Understanding and exploring the disease from multiple vantage points is essential. The Children’s Brain Tumor Project at Weill Cornell Medicine is the only lab in the country with a singular focus on rare, often inoperable, and sometimes incurable pediatric brain tumors that uses a novel, multi-directional approach integrating key neuroscientific disciplines.

This approach enables the team to gain a true understanding of these diseases and how to approach treatment more effectively.The initiative consists of four united research efforts under the same roof, studying rare pediatric brain tumors from different strategic angles that inform one another in our effort to accelerate cures: precision medicine, drug delivery, immunotherapy, and developmental biology.