Costanza Lo Cascio, PhD, and Philip T. Pauerstein, MD, PhD, receive 2026 Damon Runyon-Jake Wetchler Award

Each year, the Damon Runyon-Jake Wetchler Award for Pediatric Innovation is given to a third-year Damon Runyon Fellow whose research has the greatest potential to impact the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of pediatric cancer. This year, for the first time, the award was given to two scientists, both of whom are Damon Runyon-St. Jude Fellows: Costanza Lo Cascio, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Philip T. Pauerstein, MD, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Lo Cascio is studying how diffuse midline gliomas—incurable brain cancers that affect primarily children—are able to survive radiation therapy, with the goal of identifying resistance mechanisms that can be targeted to sensitize these tumors to treatment. Dr. Pauerstein is working to improve CAR T therapies for leukemia, which, despite excellent initial responses to treatment, recurs in up to half of pediatric patients.

“Advanced therapies like immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized treatment for some adult cancers, but those advances haven’t really reached children because their cancers are so different genetically,” said Dr. Pauerstein. “We need to focus on what drives pediatric cancers so that we can offer them better treatments."

The  Jake Wetchler Foundation was established in honor of Jake, who survived Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 18, but then lost his life to leukemia at age 20. Jake’s philosophical bent and determination live on in the impact of the award that carries his name.

“To Jake, cancer was not just a disease, it was an injustice,” said Jean Singer, Jake’s mother and Founder of the Foundation. “And I know everyone at Damon Runyon fights daily against the injustice that is cancer.”