Research Spotlight: Caroline Hanson

Targeting the Cells That Drive DIPG

With support from a ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation fellowship, researcher Caroline Hanson is making exciting progress in understanding how DIPG/DMG grows and how it might be slowed. Her work explores how supplementation with a certain omega-3 fatty acid can encourage aggressive, stem-like cancer cells to mature into more stable brain cells, reducing tumor growth in preclinical models. Over the past year, Hanson has identified a key protein that helps explain how this process works, opening the door to new ways of targeting the cells that drive this devastating disease. It’s innovative science like this, backed by early investment, that continues to move the field forward and bring hope to families facing DIPG.

One of the greatest challenges in treating diffuse midline glioma (DMG) is that the cancer cells behave like they’re stuck in an early developmental stage. Instead of maturing into specialized brain cells with limited growth potential, they remain in a dangerous, stem-like state, constantly dividing and driving tumor growth. With support from the fellowship, Hanson is exploring an unexpected and promising way to interrupt this process: helping cancer cells “grow up.”

A graduate student whose work spans multiple institutions, Hanson’s ChadTough fellowship has made it possible for her to pursue a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary project involving three laboratories across Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the University of Virginia. These cross-institutional efforts, so critical in diseases like DIPG/DMG, are made possible through ChadTough’s support and its belief that collaboration is key to finding a cure.

Hanson’s research builds on a striking discovery from her lab: that a naturally occurring omega-3 fatty acid can encourage DMG cells to begin maturing into more stable, less aggressive brain cells. In laboratory and animal models, increasing these omega-3 fats reduced the number of the most harmful tumor-driving cells, slowed tumor growth, and even extended survival. Notably, this effect was specific to omega-3 fatty acids and did not occur with other common fats.

Over the past year, Hanson has focused on understanding how omega-3 fatty acids produce this effect. Using advanced protein-mapping techniques, she identified a key protein inside cancer cells that directly interacts with omega-3 fats. This protein helps control how tightly DNA is packaged inside the cell, a process that determines which genes are turned on or off. Her work shows that omega-3 fatty acids’ ability to push cancer cells toward maturity depends on this protein’s activity.

This progress has already been shared with the scientific community through multiple presentations at Harvard and at the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Hanson recently authored a review article highlighting next-generation technologies that could accelerate precision medicine. As she continues her graduate training and prepares for the next stage of her scientific career, Hanson remains deeply committed to advancing discoveries that could one day change outcomes for children diagnosed with DMG.

In the coming year, her work will dive deeper into how omega-3 fatty acids and this newly identified protein work together to reprogram cancer cells, shifting them away from a stem-like, aggressive identity and toward a more manageable state.

By revealing new ways to limit the cells that fuel tumor growth, Hanson’s research represents a powerful example of how innovative science, supported early, can open entirely new paths toward treatment and bring hope to families facing DIPG.