Kristy Weber Research Program

Led by Kristy L. Weber, MD, the Penn Sarcoma program has developed a collaborative basic/translational research program between Penn Medicine, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Penn Vet. This team is focused on developing new approaches to diagnosing and treating pediatric and adult bone and soft tissue tumors including Ewing sarcoma and osteosarcoma. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop better therapies, improve cure rates and minimize treatment toxicities for patients with malignant bone and soft tissue tumors.

Specific work is being done to identify druggable targets in the primary sarcoma as well as in the metastasis (Celeste Simon and Karin Eisinger labs). Epigenetic (Margaret Chou lab) approaches and manipulation of the local immune environment of the tumor (Malay Haldar lab) are additional approaches in tumors such as synovial sarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma, all of which occur in the CHOP patient population.

Work at the Penn Veterinary School (Nicola Mason) is focused on clinical trials in dogs with osteosarcoma using a listeria vaccine targeting Her-2-neu with promising results that may be translated to clinical trials in children. 

The goal is to better understand the science behind the spread of sarcoma to the lungs (metastasis) in order to develop investigator-initiated clinical trials at both The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine.