In the first installment of DIPG Close to Home, The Citizen told the story of Rosalie, who was given nine months to live after her diagnosis and died nearly two years later at age 8. Part 2 followed 6-year-old Aubrey Ward, a Peachtree City child who completed radiation and is pursuing an experimental CAR T-cell treatment. Their stories show the devastating reality of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG—a type of diffuse midline glioma, commonly called DMG. This final installment looks at the researchers and funders working to give children like Rosalie and Aubrey better options than families have today. For a child diagnosed with DIPG, radiation can sometimes restore movement, improve swallowing and shrink the tumor enough to provide months of more normal life. Then, in most cases, the tumor begins growing again. That is the problem researchers across the United States and abroad are trying to solve—by reprogramming immune cells, studying the machinery inside the tumor, finding new ways to deliver treatment into the brain and developing better methods of monitoring the disease. Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research is currently funding 13 research projects involving DMG, according to a grant list the organization provided to The Citizen. Some focus specifically on DMG. Others study approaches that could apply to several pediatric brain tumors or other childhood cancers. Together, they show researchers attacking the disease from many directions. “We are…
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