The Carbone lab received an amazing gift from the NW Sarcoma Foundation: a check of 15,000$!!! These funds will be used to start a study comparing sarcoma in gibbon and human. Ricky is a beautiful gibbon that has developed an aggressive and malignant sarcoma on her foot. With our study we hope to learn more about the genetic basis of sarcoma in order to help her and human patients. With the valuable help of pathologists at OHSU, Ricky’s sarcoma has been identified as a Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor (MPNST). We are now in the process of starting the DNA and RNA sequencing of the tumor and hope to learn as much as possible about it. Tumors in non-human primates are extremely rare and now we have the chance to analyze one in detail and learn from it. The gibbon genome has been teaching us a lot about mechanisms of genome instability during species evolution. Here we have the chance to extend this knowledge to disease. We are extremely grateful to Northwest Sarcoma Foundation for their generous gift as without it we could not work on this exciting project

More on this story on the NW Sarcoma Foundation website.

More on Ricky’s story here and here.