Our Research Partners & Clinical Trials

At Duke...there is HOPE!

We partner with doctors and researchers at the Duke Brain Tumor Center to fund innovative research on the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.

Innovative research is not federally funded until enough data has been collected. For this reason, private funding is critical for clinical trial research to move forward. With private funding, our research partners at Duke hope to bear enough promising results to receive federal grants worth tens of millions of dollars – grants that will take KMF funded clinical trials to patients on a nationwide level.

Our Clinial Trials

Our Research Partners

Our Clinical Trials

Our 2022 & 2023 gifts to Duke were used to fund three FDA-approved clinical trials for brain cancer patients with high-grade glioma & Glioblastoma, just like the one our namesake Knox had.

FLIrT

Trial 1:

The trial is opened for enrollment to recurrent high-grade glioma patients at Duke as of July 24th, 2023. Upon promising results, doctors at Duke hope to make it available to patients at Stanford, UC San Diego, NYU, and the University of Washington.

FLIrT is an exciting new FDA-approved trial evaluating if PROZAC can enhance the effect of chemotherapy against recurrent high-grade brain tumors.

PROZAC is a drug commonly used to treat depression. PROZAC is also already widely available, inexpensive, and has a well-understood safety profile. New research shows that PROZAC can also make tumors more sensitive to chemotherapy.

The findings of this trial are very exciting, because they could potentially be rapidly translated into routine clinical practice.

TIL

Trial 2:

The team at Duke is studying ways to make immunotherapy highly individualized to a patient’s body and their tumor.

They’re is using tumor samples removed at the time of surgery to grow and strengthen the patient’s native immune cells outside of the body (in the lab).

The team will give the strengthened immune cells back to patients, to prompt the patient’s own immune system to assist in destroying the tumor.

PESKe

Trial 3:

Doctors are evaluating the efficacy of a drug called Evolocumab to make cancer cells more visible to the immune system.

Evolocumab (Evo) is a drug commonly used to treat high cholesterol.

PESKe will assess how well Evo can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and make tumor cells more visible to the immune system & vulnerable to treatment.

This content was reviewed by Dr. Mustafa Khasraw, MD of the Duke Brain Tumor Center.

Our Research Advisory Board

Dr. Annick Desjardins, MD, FRCPC

Annick completed her residency in Adult Neurology at the Universite de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Her residency was followed by a two-year fellowship in Neuro-oncology at The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke. Upon completion of her fellowship in July of 2005, she joined the Brain Tumor Center as faculty. Dr. D is the Director of Clinical Research at Duke's Brain Tumor Center and the Clinical Trials Core Co-Director for the Duke Brain Tumor SPORE and P01 grants. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada in Adult Neurology and is certified in the subspecialty of Neuro-oncology by the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties. Her main focus in clinical research includes the direct intracerebral administration of therapeutics. At Duke, she has been the Principal Investigator on over 40 therapeutic trials in neuro-oncology, led international multi-center trials, and held several INDs. Dr. Desjardins had the great privilege of caring for Knox while he underwent treatments at Duke. His passion for life and his ability to connect with everyone he met was contagious. She is excited to be involved in the foundation in his memory.

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Dr. Mustafa Khasraw, MD

Mustafa is a medical oncologist, neuro-oncologist, professor of medicine and neurooncology, and Deputy Director of the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at Duke University. At Duke, he is tasked with speeding up clinical research and translation for scientists across all departments and all tumor types. Dr. Khasraw is the Clinical Trials TRACK co-lead for Society of Neuro-oncology (SNO). He serves as an advisor and grant reviewer for several non-profits and patient advocacy groups. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and an Elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK) and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney (Australia).

Dr. Kelly Hotchkiss, PhD

Kelly is a scientist and basic science lead with expertise in developing pre-clinical immune cell culture, synthetic biology and animal models as well as evaluations of biological systems from a biomedical engineering perspective. She has worked with the team for 5 years and recently published two peer reviewed papers focused on improving clinical trial design in brain cancer.

Dr. Hotchkiss (L) and Dr. Desjardins (R) speaking with attendees at our Third Annual Fundraising Event, Night For Knox, in April 2023.

Dr. Hotchkiss (L) and KMF CEO Becky Martin (R) at our Inaugural Golf Against Gliomas Tournament in September 2023.