Rally Foundation awards career development grant to Ewing sarcoma researcher at MUSC

A career development award from the Rally Foundation will help one MUSC scientist to expand his research into potential treatments for Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone cancer that most often affects adolescents.

Casey Langdon, Ph.D., is an assistant professor affiliated with both MUSC Hollings Cancer Center and the Darby Children’s Research Institute at MUSC. His award was one of three new career development awards that the Rally Foundation made this year. It also marks the first time that Rally has made this award to someone at an institution that previously received the award: Jezabel Rodriguez Blanco, Ph.D., received the award in 2020.

Langdon will be looking at whether new combinations of drugs already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other cancers could be effective in reducing viability and proliferation of the Ewing sarcoma cells as well as their ability to migrate and invade other tissues.

“There are some interesting differences at the protein level that really can’t be explained through DNA sequencing,” he explained. “What we found was those cell lines have this low expression of a specific protein, and in those cell lines, there was an increased sensitivity to AKT inhibitors.”

AKT is a protein that acts as a signaling node in a pathway that’s important for cell growth, survival and migration, and there’s been much interest in developing AKT inhibitors for cancer treatments. The first drug of this type was approved last November.

“We’re trying to come up with some novel combinations,” Langdon said. “We came across another FDA-approved drug that synergized extremely well with AKT inhibition. So my grant is trying to dive deep into the mechanism underlying this synergy in Ewing sarcoma.

“A goal of the program is to figure out more about the basic biology of what’s driving these Ewing sarcomas and using that information to inform possible treatments that we could use to develop clinical trials to help these patients – because they really need it. They’re getting the same treatments that they got in the early 2000s.”

“A goal of the program is to figure out more about the basic biology of what’s driving these Ewing sarcomas and using that information to inform possible treatments that we could use to develop clinical trials to help these patients – because they really need it. They’re getting the same treatments that they got in the early 2000s.”

Casey Langdon, Ph.D.

Ewing sarcoma affects about 250 people each year, Langdon said. “But for those 250 families, it’s the most important thing in the world.”

“They get the kitchen sink thrown at them in terms of therapy. They get a very intensive chemotherapy regimen with five really nasty chemotherapy drugs,” he added. This means that, although many children are treated successfully, they will deal with lifelong side effects of the treatment.

Langdon developed an interest in cancer research early on, after his grandfather died of lung cancer. But seeing a friend deal with his toddler daughter’s cancer pushed him toward working on pediatric cancer. After earning his doctorate at Yale University, he did a fellowship at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

There, he said, it was very obvious how work in the lab could affect people in real life.

“For the longest time, there was only one cafeteria there. So you would be working late or working on the weekend, and your experiments aren’t working. Then you go down to the cafeteria to get a snack, and there’s a little kid there in a little red wagon hooked up to an IV, with two parents who look dog-tired – and it really hits home,” he said. “Now, being a dad myself and thinking about what those families deal with, it hits home a lot harder.”

After his fellowship, Langdon began his search for a faculty position. He was attracted to MUSC by its emphasis on collaboration and the nurturing environment for early-career researchers.

“The collaborative nature here is just unparalleled,” he said. “I feel like I could reach out to about any other professor here, and they'd be at least interested in talking about the science and how they can help.”

As Langdon builds his lab, he’s hopeful that this Ewing sarcoma research will prove relevant to other types of sarcomas. Altogether, pediatric sarcomas, cancers of both bone and soft tissue like muscle, account for about 15% of all childhood cancers.

“I just want to try to make a mark with my science.”

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