November 3, 2025 • 12 mins
Monday (3rd) Governor DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis announced $30 million in grants to four Florida children's hospitals, to improve research and care for pediatric cancer patients in the state. One goal is to make sure children and families don't need to leave the state to access care. Targets include encouraging collaboration among researchers and creating a portal to help parents navigate clinical trials. We speak with Dr. Cassandra Josephson, the Hawkins Family Endowed Chair director of the Cancer and Blood Disorders Institute at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Governor DeSantis and
First Lady Casey DeSantis were in Jacksonville the morning on
which we're recording this. They announced some thirty million dollars
of state funding to support pediatric cancer research in Florida
in terms of four seven and a half million dollar
grants going to four pediatric hospitals around the state. One
(00:23):
of them is JOHNS Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Saint Petersburg.
To find out more about this and how Johns Hopkins
All Children's will be using the money, Doctor Cassandra Josephson
is the Hawkins Family Endowed Chair, Director of the Cancer
and Blood Disorders Institute at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital,
as well as Professor of Oncology and Pediatrics at the
(00:45):
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and she joins us
now and Beyond the News. Doctor Josephson, welcome, thank you now.
As the Governor had mentioned in his announcement in Jacksonville
pediatric cancer, one of the reasons the state is stepping
forward is because while there's a lot of money in
(01:05):
the private sector and grants and such in terms of
adult cancer research, that the money for pediatric cancer research
has has lagged somewhat in terms of the market driving
the process. We're going to talk with you in a
moment about how you'll be putting this grant to use,
(01:27):
but tell us about that the money the issue as
far as getting enough money available to research pediatric cancer
and to work on solutions.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, so it's it's a really good point that the
governor made, and I really think the foresight of the Governor,
the first Lady, and the legislature has been really remarkable
because again, pediatric cancer is really not high on the
list of drug companies and of private sector to pay
(02:01):
money for something that might not have as big a
re turn on investment. However, people value their children and
value their children's health, and when they get cancer, which
can be a deadly illness, there is a lot of
wanting to do something, but we have to plan for that.
And so the reason this gift in this grant is
(02:23):
really a gift to the community is because we were
able to apply for such a large amount of money
that can actually accelerate what is already going on in Florida.
And why I say accelerate is because usually we have
very small chunks of money that are given to do
different projects, but they're just not enough funding to really
(02:45):
sort of fuel the rocket, you know, like in Florida
having NASA here really to fuel it to a place
that gets us to the next level. And this capability
of all of the children's hospitals getting this kind of
money to work with.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
All of the other children, all the other physicians.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Who are treating children around the state, and having the
specialty hospitals collaborate with them and collaborate amongst each other,
really is going to be able to have you create
the infrastructure for the next level of.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Research to happen. And what do I mean by that?
In order to.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Do research on children where there are so few kids
in different categories of cancer, you have to have everybody
work together to make the movement of the science. And
in order to make the movement, you have to be
able to do basic science, you have to be able
to translational science, and you have to have to do
clinical trials.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
And if you don't have.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
All of that kind of combined, it's hard to bring
new ideas and new innovations to therapy and make new
breakthroughs for cures. And it's also hard to be able
to expand access to different clinical trials in the state
of Florida, And with this we should be able to
(04:08):
do both of those things. And that's what we're going
to be doing at Johns Hopkins all children for sure
with this money.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And let's drill down a little bit more into your
component of this. And obviously you're going to be networking
together with the other children's hospitals involved in the grants.
But what will Johns Hopkins and your institute be doing
with this money that will help you advance the cause
(04:36):
of treating and researching.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And hopefully curing right, hopefully yes.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And hopefully curing PEP have to cancer.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, yeah, and your question is really being asked to
the right person. So we were given about three and
a half weeks to put this grant together and I
led the charge to do that. But it was easy
to do in many respects at john Hopkins because we
have people who are already working on different aspects of
(05:03):
treating cancer and leukemia, brain tumors and solid tumors like
rahabdomyosocoma and neuroblastoma. All of these are being worked on
at our hospital currently, and this just supercharged that capability.
So we have structured our money into five pillars over
(05:27):
the next five years, and the pillars take on meeting
some of the Florida Award asks and some of those
asks were that we try to make it where no
child has to leave Florida to get their care, and
(05:48):
that means expanding access to clinical trials, and our first
pillar really concentrates on doing that. It does it by
having more clinical research people to help with that infrastructure.
It actually helps opening up trials quicker, whether they're industry
sponsored or whether they're investigator initiated, meaning that we started
them at Johns Hopkins. We needed more people in that infrastructure.
(06:12):
We are the only pediatric Phase one trial site in
the whole state of Florida that is part of the
Children's Oncology Group, and this is going to supercharge us
to be able to open more of those Phase one studies.
We also are going to be able to expand some
of our investigator initiated studies, and we're going to be
working with Gallafano Children's Hospital to expand one of those
(06:34):
for kids that have relapsed sarcoma that are a certain
type of cancer. We also in our second pillar are
going to be able to open up a portal that
is going to help people find all of the clinical
trials in the state of Florida, and that means that
people will not necessarily have to go far away from
(06:56):
home to find a clinical trial site that they can
have their ill put on. And the reason I say
a clinical trial site is because that's how we've moved
the needle to have greater successes and more survival in
cancer for children. And by being on a study that
just helps us further those survival rates up into the
(07:18):
nineties and ninety nine percent in some of the leukemias
that we treat. The other piece of it is we're
going to have a website, a virtual site where all
of the neurooncologists, so those who treat brain tumors all
over the state of Florida for children, are going to
be able to talk with each other and they're going
to be able to do what we call is tumor
(07:39):
board and they're going to be able to discuss very
very difficult cases and one of the best ways to surgically,
radiation oncology wise and chemotherapy wise treat those patients. So
putting everybody's brains together as a state of Florida to
help a child who might be in one area of
the state or another. Another pillar that we're working on,
(08:00):
and this is very unique to the whole country, actually,
is we have an RNA center that is dedicated to children,
to children only and really is specializing in looking at
brain tumors. And what they've done in this center is
look at the biology of how RNA because there are
different kinds of RNA. Some people have heard of messenger RNA,
(08:22):
but they're circular RNA and non coding RNA. Some of
that RNA can help us diagnose different types and grades
of brain tumors, and some of them can be packaged
once we know what the RNA is doing, into little
kind of nanoparticles that can go into the brain because
getting past the blood brain barrier is really really hard.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And we've been.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Working on this for a while, and we're going to
look at delivery systems, so we're looking at therapeutics, looking
at biology and diagnostics in that.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Pillar.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Another pillar that we have, so Pillar number four, is
our immuno oncology pillar, and there we're going to be
looking at both rhabdomiosocoma and other solid tumors looking inside
the micro environment of the tumor. Some tumors are cold
and some tumors are hot, and the cold tumors are
the hard ones to crack open and get the chemotherapy
(09:19):
to work.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So we've been working.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
On ways to wake the tumor up and become warm
and have our immune system be able to recognize and
help us attack those tumors. So that's kind of what
Pillar four is, and Pillar five is one of the
most exciting things we're working on, which is having a
cell therapy core and a cell therapy pillars that can
(09:42):
actually make chimeric eigen receptor key cells, which currently everybody
knows is cart and is used a lot in leukemia
and in adult cancers. They're trying to use it on
brain tumors and solid tumors, and we're actually going to
have it completely focused on children, and we're going to
try to look at those t cells of the kids
(10:03):
that have the cancers and try to help wake their
immune system up in a different way with kind of
a it's called adoptive cell therapy and be able to
do this in the lab, which is why basic science
and translational science is important.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And then be able to hopefully.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Get that to the bedsides, which is basically what happened
when car T cell took off and Emily Whitehead at
Children's Hospital Philadelphia got cured. And that's kind of where
we're headed, is how can we do that for other
types of cancers in children? So those that's how we're
going to apply this money, and we're going to start
(10:42):
hitting the ground running, you know, in the next week
or so.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
With all of that, that is a very sweeping answer,
and it sounds like you've got a lot Obviously, you've
planned this out and you've got a lot ahead and
the in just the fifteen thirty second here that we
have left again, this is just a very It sounds
like a great improvement for those families and those children
(11:11):
that have to deal with pediatric cancer, not just an
improvement in the chances of being treated and cured, but
also in the quality of life while they're trying to
deal with this thing that Casey Santus, a cancer survivor,
said she couldn't imagine being a mother in that situation.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So one of the things we built into the portal
is having navigators that we're going to be hiring nurses
that are going to help people be able to find
what trial is good for them, help them navigate through
a system that's very difficult. Once you get to the
treatment side of things and you get your diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
What do you do next?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And so this has also been able to This grant
has been able to help us be able to help
patients navigate through all of that as well as look
for cures if they relapse, and be able to take
a multi pronged approach to diagnosis, treatment, and potentially cure.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
We're really grateful to you for taking time on such
short notice after you're on the way back from Jacksonville.
As we speak to you with this amazing announcement, it's
obvious that you're very enthusiastic about it and you perceive
that this is going to make a great deal of
difference for pediatric cancer and the families that are dealing
with it. So we appreciate your time and your help
(12:33):
with this. Doctor Cassandra Josephson with JOHNS Hopkins All Children's
Hospital in Saint Petersburg, thank you very much for joining
us on Beyond the News.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Governor DeSantis and
First Lady Casey DeSantis were in Jacksonville the morning on
which we're recording this. They announced some thirty million dollars
of state funding to support pediatric cancer research in Florida
in terms of four seven and a half million dollar
grants going to four pediatric hospitals around the state. One
(00:23):
of them is JOHNS Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Saint Petersburg.
To find out more about this and how Johns Hopkins
All Children's will be using the money, Doctor Cassandra Josephson
is the Hawkins Family Endowed Chair, Director of the Cancer
and Blood Disorders Institute at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital,
as well as Professor of Oncology and Pediatrics at the
(00:45):
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and she joins us
now and Beyond the News. Doctor Josephson, welcome, thank you now.
As the Governor had mentioned in his announcement in Jacksonville
pediatric cancer, one of the reasons the state is stepping
forward is because while there's a lot of money in
(01:05):
the private sector and grants and such in terms of
adult cancer research, that the money for pediatric cancer research
has has lagged somewhat in terms of the market driving
the process. We're going to talk with you in a
moment about how you'll be putting this grant to use,
(01:27):
but tell us about that the money the issue as
far as getting enough money available to research pediatric cancer
and to work on solutions.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, so it's it's a really good point that the
governor made, and I really think the foresight of the Governor,
the first Lady, and the legislature has been really remarkable
because again, pediatric cancer is really not high on the
list of drug companies and of private sector to pay
(02:01):
money for something that might not have as big a
re turn on investment. However, people value their children and
value their children's health, and when they get cancer, which
can be a deadly illness, there is a lot of
wanting to do something, but we have to plan for that.
And so the reason this gift in this grant is
(02:23):
really a gift to the community is because we were
able to apply for such a large amount of money
that can actually accelerate what is already going on in Florida.
And why I say accelerate is because usually we have
very small chunks of money that are given to do
different projects, but they're just not enough funding to really
(02:45):
sort of fuel the rocket, you know, like in Florida
having NASA here really to fuel it to a place
that gets us to the next level. And this capability
of all of the children's hospitals getting this kind of
money to work with.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
All of the other children, all the other physicians.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Who are treating children around the state, and having the
specialty hospitals collaborate with them and collaborate amongst each other,
really is going to be able to have you create
the infrastructure for the next level of.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Research to happen. And what do I mean by that?
In order to.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Do research on children where there are so few kids
in different categories of cancer, you have to have everybody
work together to make the movement of the science. And
in order to make the movement, you have to be
able to do basic science, you have to be able
to translational science, and you have to have to do
clinical trials.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
And if you don't have.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
All of that kind of combined, it's hard to bring
new ideas and new innovations to therapy and make new
breakthroughs for cures. And it's also hard to be able
to expand access to different clinical trials in the state
of Florida, And with this we should be able to
(04:08):
do both of those things. And that's what we're going
to be doing at Johns Hopkins all children for sure
with this money.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And let's drill down a little bit more into your
component of this. And obviously you're going to be networking
together with the other children's hospitals involved in the grants.
But what will Johns Hopkins and your institute be doing
with this money that will help you advance the cause
(04:36):
of treating and researching.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And hopefully curing right, hopefully yes.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And hopefully curing PEP have to cancer.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Well, yeah, and your question is really being asked to
the right person. So we were given about three and
a half weeks to put this grant together and I
led the charge to do that. But it was easy
to do in many respects at john Hopkins because we
have people who are already working on different aspects of
(05:03):
treating cancer and leukemia, brain tumors and solid tumors like
rahabdomyosocoma and neuroblastoma. All of these are being worked on
at our hospital currently, and this just supercharged that capability.
So we have structured our money into five pillars over
(05:27):
the next five years, and the pillars take on meeting
some of the Florida Award asks and some of those
asks were that we try to make it where no
child has to leave Florida to get their care, and
(05:48):
that means expanding access to clinical trials, and our first
pillar really concentrates on doing that. It does it by
having more clinical research people to help with that infrastructure.
It actually helps opening up trials quicker, whether they're industry
sponsored or whether they're investigator initiated, meaning that we started
them at Johns Hopkins. We needed more people in that infrastructure.
(06:12):
We are the only pediatric Phase one trial site in
the whole state of Florida that is part of the
Children's Oncology Group, and this is going to supercharge us
to be able to open more of those Phase one studies.
We also are going to be able to expand some
of our investigator initiated studies, and we're going to be
working with Gallafano Children's Hospital to expand one of those
(06:34):
for kids that have relapsed sarcoma that are a certain
type of cancer. We also in our second pillar are
going to be able to open up a portal that
is going to help people find all of the clinical
trials in the state of Florida, and that means that
people will not necessarily have to go far away from
(06:56):
home to find a clinical trial site that they can
have their ill put on. And the reason I say
a clinical trial site is because that's how we've moved
the needle to have greater successes and more survival in
cancer for children. And by being on a study that
just helps us further those survival rates up into the
(07:18):
nineties and ninety nine percent in some of the leukemias
that we treat. The other piece of it is we're
going to have a website, a virtual site where all
of the neurooncologists, so those who treat brain tumors all
over the state of Florida for children, are going to
be able to talk with each other and they're going
to be able to do what we call is tumor
(07:39):
board and they're going to be able to discuss very
very difficult cases and one of the best ways to surgically,
radiation oncology wise and chemotherapy wise treat those patients. So
putting everybody's brains together as a state of Florida to
help a child who might be in one area of
the state or another. Another pillar that we're working on,
(08:00):
and this is very unique to the whole country, actually,
is we have an RNA center that is dedicated to children,
to children only and really is specializing in looking at
brain tumors. And what they've done in this center is
look at the biology of how RNA because there are
different kinds of RNA. Some people have heard of messenger RNA,
(08:22):
but they're circular RNA and non coding RNA. Some of
that RNA can help us diagnose different types and grades
of brain tumors, and some of them can be packaged
once we know what the RNA is doing, into little
kind of nanoparticles that can go into the brain because
getting past the blood brain barrier is really really hard.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And we've been.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Working on this for a while, and we're going to
look at delivery systems, so we're looking at therapeutics, looking
at biology and diagnostics in that.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Pillar.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Another pillar that we have, so Pillar number four, is
our immuno oncology pillar, and there we're going to be
looking at both rhabdomiosocoma and other solid tumors looking inside
the micro environment of the tumor. Some tumors are cold
and some tumors are hot, and the cold tumors are
the hard ones to crack open and get the chemotherapy
(09:19):
to work.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So we've been working.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
On ways to wake the tumor up and become warm
and have our immune system be able to recognize and
help us attack those tumors. So that's kind of what
Pillar four is, and Pillar five is one of the
most exciting things we're working on, which is having a
cell therapy core and a cell therapy pillars that can
(09:42):
actually make chimeric eigen receptor key cells, which currently everybody
knows is cart and is used a lot in leukemia
and in adult cancers. They're trying to use it on
brain tumors and solid tumors, and we're actually going to
have it completely focused on children, and we're going to
try to look at those t cells of the kids
(10:03):
that have the cancers and try to help wake their
immune system up in a different way with kind of
a it's called adoptive cell therapy and be able to
do this in the lab, which is why basic science
and translational science is important.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And then be able to hopefully.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Get that to the bedsides, which is basically what happened
when car T cell took off and Emily Whitehead at
Children's Hospital Philadelphia got cured. And that's kind of where
we're headed, is how can we do that for other
types of cancers in children? So those that's how we're
going to apply this money, and we're going to start
(10:42):
hitting the ground running, you know, in the next week
or so.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
With all of that, that is a very sweeping answer,
and it sounds like you've got a lot Obviously, you've
planned this out and you've got a lot ahead and
the in just the fifteen thirty second here that we
have left again, this is just a very It sounds
like a great improvement for those families and those children
(11:11):
that have to deal with pediatric cancer, not just an
improvement in the chances of being treated and cured, but
also in the quality of life while they're trying to
deal with this thing that Casey Santus, a cancer survivor,
said she couldn't imagine being a mother in that situation.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So one of the things we built into the portal
is having navigators that we're going to be hiring nurses
that are going to help people be able to find
what trial is good for them, help them navigate through
a system that's very difficult. Once you get to the
treatment side of things and you get your diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
What do you do next?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And so this has also been able to This grant
has been able to help us be able to help
patients navigate through all of that as well as look
for cures if they relapse, and be able to take
a multi pronged approach to diagnosis, treatment, and potentially cure.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
We're really grateful to you for taking time on such
short notice after you're on the way back from Jacksonville.
As we speak to you with this amazing announcement, it's
obvious that you're very enthusiastic about it and you perceive
that this is going to make a great deal of
difference for pediatric cancer and the families that are dealing
with it. So we appreciate your time and your help
(12:33):
with this. Doctor Cassandra Josephson with JOHNS Hopkins All Children's
Hospital in Saint Petersburg, thank you very much for joining
us on Beyond the News.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on
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