John Ligon, M.D., an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics in the University of Florida College of Medicine, has received a grant from the Children’s Oncology Group to study the impact of race and ethnicity on immunotherapy outcomes in children and adolescent young adult patients with cancer.
The Children’s Oncology Group is a clinical trials group supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The Minority Young Investigator Award, funded through Children’s Cancer Research Fund, will allow Ligon to continue a research focus that he developed at the NCI, where he completed fellowship training in pediatric immunotherapy.
“Through this project, I will look at disparities in clinical trial recruitment in terms of race and ethnicity and assess different outcomes for minority patients treated on immunotherapy clinical trials,” Ligon said. “This is important work and I am excited about the platform this will give me in the Children’s Oncology Group.”
The Children’s Oncology Group is the world’s largest organization devoted exclusively to childhood and adolescent cancer research. It unites more than 10,000 experts in childhood cancer at more than 200 leading children’s hospitals, universities and cancer centers across North America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe in the fight against childhood cancer.
Ligon is a member of the UF Health Cancer Center’s Cancer Therapeutics & Host Response research program. He is also a member of the Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy Initiative at the University of Florida and collaborates with Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D., and Paul Castillo Caro, M.D., to advance new treatments that harness the power of the immune system to fight cancer.
