Tyler's Team

Tyler's Team was formed in 2000 by a group of San Marino High School students to honor the memory of their classmate Tyler George who passed away February 2, 2000 after a yearlong battle with leukemia.

Justin Nelson, Keith Fujiu, Rigo Medina and Brandon Lennox were the nucleus of the original team and close friends of Tyler's. They established a club that would become one of the largest on campus and was dedicated to raising money for leukemia research at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

To date Tyler's Team has been able to donate over $120,000 to the research being done at CHLA by Dr. Barry Maurer, a researcher/physician whose work in developing new drug therapies is on the cutting edge. Dr. Maurer and his group are investigating the effectiveness of Fenretinide, an artificial vitamin A derivative, in combination with other drugs to attack only the leukemia cells.

Tyler's Team is now in its ninth year of operation. The members are currently planning their big fundraiser of the year, the 11th Annual Banquet that is set for March 4, 2011 at Café Santorini in Pasadena.

BARRY J. MAURER
M.D., Ph.D., USC

My efforts are dedicated to development of new drugs for use against childhood cancers. Working with Dr. C. Patrick Reynolds, current studies involve novel drug combinations using the synthetic, vitamin A-related (retinoid) compound, fenretinide. We have determined that fenretinide stimulates many types of solid cancer cells, but not normal cells, to make large quantities of a wax-like molecule, called ceramide. Cells use to make membranes, but also as a 'signaling' molecule to assess cell damage.

When a cell is damaged by heat, ultraviolet light or shear stress, enzymes are activated that break membrane back down into ceramide. The cell biochemical balances its ability to repair the damage against the amount of ceramide that builds up. If too much ceramide builds up too quickly, the cell commits suicide. Fenretinide is able to trick cancer cells, but not normal cells, into making large quantities of ceramide by de novo synthesis (I.e. 'from scratch'), rather than from the breakdown of their membranes. By combining fenretinide with other drugs (such as safingol) that enhance the 'suicide' mechanism, we have increased the ability of fenretinide to kill cancer cells up to a hundred-fold in laboratory experiments. Recently, we have demonstrated that this approach kills leukemia cells, as well. Recognizing this as a highly novel way of attacking cancer, the National Cancer Institute is currently preparing intravenous formulations of fenretinide and safingol for us.