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Halting hemangiomas

Infantile hemangiomas are benign tumors that normally present as a strawberry-like birthmark on a baby's face, neck or trunk within one to two weeks of birth. They grow rapidly for one year and typically disappear by age 8 or 9 with no treatment, usually causing no problems. Occasionally, however, they can destroy tissue and be very disfiguring, and some large tumors can cause vision, breathing and feeding problems. The current treatment for severe hemangiomas is steroids, which are risky in infants, and 30 percent of hemangiomas don't respond.

Joyce Bischoff, PhD, and postdoctoral fellow Elisa Boscolo, PhD, both from Children's Vascular Biology Program, have isolated a stem cell that seems to be the primary cause of infantile hemangioma. In 2008, the hospital awarded Bischoff and her lab a Translational Research Grant to identify potential drugs that target this cell, using high-throughput techniques to test a library of compounds, many of which are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The ultimate goal is to move the research into clinical trials as quickly as possible.

"If we can understand how a hemangioma forms, we should be able to accelerate its disappearance, or prevent its growth in the first place," says Bischoff. "The tumor usually goes away on its own, so the answer is right there. I think this is a problem we can solve."