Impact of 2018 Heart Allocation System and Update on Pulmonary Assist System

Dr. Yeahwa Hong, MD
Title: "Impact of 2018 Heart Allocation System and Update on Pulmonary Assist System"

Mentors: Drs. David Kaczorowski and Keith Cook

Dr. Lauren Rosenblum, MD PhD

Title: Intraoperative Molecular Imaging of Neuroblastoma with 111In-Dinutuximab-IR800

Neuroblastoma, the most common pediatric solid malignancy, affects 700-800 children per year in the US. For a third of those patients, high-risk neuroblastoma has a 5-year-survival of less than 50%, despite multimodal therapy. Although complete surgical resection is an important component of therapy, tumor margins and disease deposits are difficult to detect and completely resect. Intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI) uses targeted radioisotopes and/or fluorophores to find and differentiate cancer tissue intraoperatively. Radioactive isotopes and near-infrared fluorophores complement each other in dual-labeled probes by providing both depth of detection (radioisotope) and visual delineation of tumor borders (fluorophore) with common clinically used handheld detectors. Our group recently designed a novel dual-labeled IMI probe, 111In-dinutuximab-IR800, which uses an FDA-approved targeted antibody to enhance detection of GD2 expressing cancers such as neuroblastoma. We are investigating its use in the surgical resection of neuroblastoma.

Mentors: Drs. Marcus Malek and Gary Kohanbash