Forging the Future of Sarcoma Care and Research

At age 7, Will was diagnosed with an osteosarcoma after breaking his leg while visiting his grandmother in Pennsylvania. Scans of the injury revealed that Will’s broken leg was likely caused by a tumor. Hundreds of miles from home and overwhelmed by their son’s crushing cancer diagnosis, Will’s parents were delivered another devastating blow when doctors explained that amputation might be necessary to keep the cancer from spreading.

Upon hearing that prognosis, Will’s mom and dad decided to get Will back home to central Ohio where they were told that, just a few miles from their family’s home, a team of pediatric orthopedic surgeons and oncology specialists at Nationwide Children’s Hospital were spearheading the newest treatment approaches for pediatric sarcoma patients. This is where Will’s parents desperately hoped to find options that might save their son’s life and his leg, too. 

“We deal in rarities,” says Thomas Scharschmidt, MD, director of the Pediatric Orthopedic Oncology Program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and professor of Orthopedics at The Ohio State University. “When you consider that across the entire U.S. population, we have between 2,500 and 3,000 cases of primary malignant bone tumors each year, and only half of those are kids, every case requires unique consideration and planning.” 

The Nationwide Children’s team is bringing the transformational impact of 3D printing and virtual modeling to patients across the hospital. Learn more about a unique collaboration that has made it the standard of care for sarcoma patients. 

Sarcoma and Solid Tumor Clinical Studies

Our research team looks for ways to decrease the size and impact of solid tumors, or to slow the growth of the tumor in the safest way possible. This is determined through a combination of inhibitors, radiation treatments, and other therapies, including cell therapy. Our teams also study quality of life issues that may affect children and adolescents with sarcoma and other cancers such as fertility preservation, long-term follow-up and late effects.

Transforming Treatment for Paratesticular Rhabdomyosarcoma in Adolescents With Robotics

Retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (RPLND) has been a crucial component of treating testicular and paratesticular cancers for over a century. Recent advancements in minimally invasive techniques, such as robotic-assisted methods, have expanded the applicability of RPLND, offering reduced morbidity and faster recovery.

In a study published in the National Library of Medicine, Daniel DaJusta, MD, pediatric urologist at Nationwide Children’s and clinical assistant professor of Urology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and Cody Clark, urology research aide in the Kidney and Urinary Tract Center, Nationwide Children’s, explore the use of robotic RPLND in adolescents with paratesticular rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), presenting the largest retrospective case series to date.

Interactions Between Invading Tumor and Lung Cells Permit Metastatic Lung Colonization of Osteosarcoma

“Osteosarcoma has an unusual propensity for a single location of metastasis — to the lung. When lung metastasis occurs, it makes everything much more difficult; the tumors tend to not respond to systemic therapies and become harder to resect,” says Ryan Roberts, MD, PhD, a principal investigator for the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute and physician for the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “While resection surgeries have greatly improved in recent years, systemic therapies haven’t seen much progress over the past 40 years.”

Dr. Roberts and colleagues have identified mechanisms that help those few surviving cancer cells to persist within lung tissues after dissemination. The findings were published in Cellular Oncology and offer insights into therapeutic strategies that could prevent and treat metastasis.

Alexandar Bishop, DPhil, Named Director, Center for Childhood Cancer Research

Nationwide Children’s Hospital is proud to welcome Alexander Bishop, DPhil, as the director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research in the Abigail Wexner Research Institute (AWRI), effective June 1, 2025. He will also serve as principal investigator in the center, as well as the Richard J. Solove Endowed Professor and Chair in Cancer Clinical Developmental Therapeutics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Prior to joining Nationwide Children’s, Dr. Bishop served as a professor in the Department of Cell Systems and Anatomy and as a principal investigator at the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute at the University of Texas Health San Antonio. With over 25 years of experience in molecular genetics and systems biology, Dr. Bishop’s research focuses on DNA damage response and DNA repair mechanisms — particularly homologous recombination, BRCA1 biology and R-loops. His research has significantly contributed to both fundamental biological insights and the identification of novel therapeutic opportunities for Ewing sarcoma and the rare genetic disease Ataxia telangiectasia.

Breaking New Ground in Cancer Immunotherapy

One of the most promising cancer treatment innovations is gene therapy, which offers a targeted approach to treating cancer cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissue. At the forefront of this innovation is Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where researchers have developed a technology that produces an off-the-shelf, single-dose treatment designed to address the shortcomings of current immunotherapies.

“Our approach merges immunology and gene therapy in a way that has not been done before,” says Timothy P. Cripe, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplant at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University. “Gene therapy is most often used to correct genetic disorders, but here we’re taking a different path to deliver safer, more efficient and patient-friendly cancer care.”

Dr. Cripe co-founded Vironexis Biotherapeutics, Inc., which has developed the TransJoin™ technology — a scalable platform that produces targeted T cell cancer treatments. Unlike traditional CAR-T therapies, which are more complex, or bispecific therapies that require prolonged infusions, this one-time treatment provides long-term, consistent cancer cell killing, with fewer adverse side effects, even in metastatic cancers.

Genevieve Kendall, PhD, is a principal investigator in the Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases and an assistant professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. In her lab, she uses zebrafish models to better understand pediatric sarcomas — devastating and aggressive solid tumors with limited treatment options. Specifically, her team studies fusion-driven rhabdomyosarcoma, which is thought to arise from problems during skeletal muscle development. They use cell culture and transgenic zebrafish systems to understand the underlying biology of the disease and identify molecular targets for treatments and ultimately improve outcomes for children with cancer.