I really love discovery.
You have a hypothesis.
You do an experiment.
What are you going to find?
It's hard, right.
Like science is hard.
And dance is very much like that, too.
Work ethic and discipline.
Like you hit that lift, and it's just like this can work.
A bold public effort to focus on a complex set of diseases fueled
by a $1.8 billion government investment supporting more than 240 research projects
across 70 initiatives driven by team science and data-sharing changing the culture of research
to reduce the burden of cancer on everyone whose lives are affected.
Cancer Moonshot.
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My name is Dr. Kimberly Stegmaier.
I'm a pediatric oncologist and physician scientist.
And I'm leading one of the Moonshot fusion oncoprotein consortium studies.
And we're in my lab here.
I'm also a ballerina.
I danced for many years.
Hi. I'm Diana.
Our fusion oncoprotein team is focused on the pediatric cancer Ewing sarcoma.
Ewing sarcoma is driven by a fusion oncoprotein most commonly known as the EWS-FLI fusion.
So what are these fusion oncoproteins?
You know, what does that mean?
Kids with cancer have a fusion in their cancer that drives their cancer.
What we observe is that there can be
breaks in the chromosomes, and these breaks occur at genes.
And then those chromosomes at those breaks
can fuse together.
And then you can get a gene,
essentially, that has part of one gene
and part of another fused together.
And then that gene encodes for now a very abnormal protein.
And that abnormal protein can promote cancer.
It also can sustain the growth of the cancer cells.
And so if we eliminate that fusion, the cancer cells will no longer grow.
And because fusions impact
at least half of childhood cancers,
this is a really important problem
in pediatric cancers.
And so the Moonshot is incredible in that it's allowing large-scale team science.
It's built collaborations not just within the teams, but across the teams.
It's just really energized the field.
And we can see the progress already that's coming out of the discoveries from this funding.
The Moonshot fusion oncoprotein team has identified a chemical
that may stabilize the cancer-promoting EWS-FLI protein in an inhibitory form.
They have developed a test that can help identify drugs
that may degrade the EWS-FLI protein,
the key cancer-promoting fusion protein in most Ewing sarcoma tumors.
And they have identified a protein that regulates the levels of EWS-FLI.
The next step: Find a drug to target this regulatory protein.
They have also identified other proteins that may be critical to the survival
of Ewing sarcoma cells and could potentially be targeted as "Achilles' heels."
And so the Moonshot funding has been really catalytic for the study
of fusion-driven pediatric cancers.
So this is the space where we're doing all of our Moonshot work in my lab.
And each of the members of our team has their lab as well
where they are doing their Moonshot work.
The work that we're all doing together as part
of this Moonshot is going to help children with cancer.
And it's also going to help adults with cancer who have fusion oncogenes.
There's this incredible excitement
when you see data for the first time
and you figured out a puzzle.
It's a lot of hard work.
It's very up-and-down, and it takes a fair amount of endurance.
But the rewards are tremendous
because what you do in the lab is ultimately going to
impact the patients that are treated in the clinics
who really desperately need your investment in making their future better.
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The landmark legislation of the National Cancer Act of 1971
set the foundation for programs like Cancer Moonshot.
Fifty years of progress.
Nothing will stop us.