Jessica Gartrell, MD

The survival rate for children with localized sarcomas is approximately 60-70%, and this statistic has remained unchanged for over 30 years. For those with metastatic and recurrent disease, the survival rate is less than 30%. Children diagnosed with rare liver tumors have similar outcomes. These statistics highlight the importance of finding successful treatment strategies for children diagnosed with these rare cancers.

Unfortunately, our ability to understand these malignancies and find successful treatments has been stalled due to the lack of clinical trials and the lack of relevant and sustainable model systems that inform our basic science and translational studies. My work is focused on partnering with pre-clinical scientists to harness the power of early phase clinical trials to create useful model systems to study sarcomas and liver tumors as well as develop combination therapies for future early phase clinical trials. 

Many sarcomas are grouped into a large heterogenous group and exhibit variable responses to chemotherapy. I aim to increase our understanding of these sarcomas by comparing tumor types across all risk levels. The genetic information gained from this work will guide the design of early phase clinical trials and inform treatment strategies for sarcomas such as desmoplastic small round cell tumors and malignant rhabdoid tumors, among others. 

The survival rate for children with rare liver cancers, such as fibrolamellar carcinoma, can be below 20%. By developing clinical trials driven by biological questions and creating useful tumor models to be used in basic and translational laboratories, we stand to increase our understanding of pediatric hepatocellular carcinomas and fibrolamellar carcinomas and increase survival rates.