The Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation has announced grants totaling more than $18.5 million in support of pediatric cancer research.

Awarded through the foundation's Crazy 8 Initiative, which was launched in 2018 with the aim of accelerating the pace of new cures for pediatric cancer, the grants will support four projects involving researchers at fifteen different research institutions. Recipients include Yael P. Mossé of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nurix Therapeutics, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Würzburg, whose project is focused on creating a drug that targets the transcription factor MYCN, a driver of aggressive pediatric cancers such as neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma; and Charles G. Mullighan and a team at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital that is exploring the mutant transcription factors that drive acute leukemias and medulloblastoma, two leading causes of cancer-related death in children.

Other recipients include Leonard Zon of Boston Children's Hospital and a team that includes researchers from Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, University Children's Hospital, the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel, the University of Washington School of Medicine, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute that is exploring the use of genetic fingerprinting technology to study how blood cancers such as leukemia develop; and Heinrich Kovar, whose project will enlist researchers from St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute, the Medical University of Vienna, and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in a study of the developmental origins of malignant bone tumors such as Ewing sarcoma and osteosarcoma.

"The Crazy 8 Initiative is vital because it orchestrates talent from around the world and creates collective solutions. Pediatric cancer research is at an incredibly pressing moment right now, and we're thrilled to be at the forefront of this progress — generating opportunities to turn competition into collaboration by bringing world-class researchers together," said Liz Scott, co-executive director of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. "This initiative is monumental, and we know it will provide a tremendous impact globally in moving the needle for pediatric cancer research over the next five years."