Johns Hopkins All Children’s Cancer & Blood Disorders Institute received a $7.5 million renewable grant for 2025-2026 from a state initiative designed to advance pediatric cancer research and care in Florida.

The Florida Cancer Connect Collaborative Research Incubator Grant program is designed to accelerate childhood cancer research at the state’s four specialty children’s hospitals — Johns Hopkins All Children’s in St. Petersburg, Nicklaus Children’s in Miami, Nemours Children’s in Orlando and Wolfson Children’s in Jacksonville.

The program has been championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, and was funded during the most recent legislative session. It is projected to last five years and potentially could fund as much as $37.5 million to each specialty children’s hospital in that span.

Florida ranks third nationally in pediatric population, and the incubator program seeks to dramatically boost childhood cancer care in the state. As the #1 ranked children’s hospital in Florida for the third in a row and nationally ranked in the top 50 for pediatric cancer by U.S. News & World Report, Johns Hopkins All Children’s aims to ensure that families can access the care they need within the state.

“This investment by the state of Florida can propel us to the forefront of pediatric cancer innovation,” says Cassandra Josephson, M.D., director of the Cancer & Blood Disorders Institute and a professor of Oncology, Pediatrics and Pathology in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Patients and families deserve the best cutting-edge care available right here in Florida, and this initiative can make that happen.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, about 15,000 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer per year in the United States. Only about 4% of National Cancer Institute funding goes toward pediatric cancer research, although cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among children after infancy.

The Johns Hopkins All Children’s grant covers an ambitious proposal dubbed “Florida’s Catalyst for Childhood Cancer Cures” that includes five pillars designed to:

• Expand access to and participation in innovative clinical trials
• Develop a statewide interactive database portal to match patients to appropriate trials within the state
• Create a statewide network to move research discoveries into clinical trials faster
• Study how the immune system can be enhanced to fight cancer
• Generate, test and deploy next-generation gene and cellular therapies to combat pediatric cancer

“Our mission is to help children with cancer and their families,” says Josephson, also the Hawkins Family Endowed Chair in the Cancer and Blood Disorders Institute. “Our plan is comprehensive, scalable and sustainable. With this funding and the infrastructure and team we have in place, Johns Hopkins All Children’s will be at the center of a Florida-based network that unites expertise and resources to improve survival rates and quality of life for children with cancer across the state.”

Johns Hopkins All Children’s is well-positioned to put the state funding to good use.

The hospital has invested millions in collecting and analyzing data, removing information that identifies individual patients. It also has collaborations with many of the world’s leading hospitals and technology companies to develop data analysis and machine learning techniques, seeking to discover trends that allow medical intervention before a problem becomes severe.

The hospital also has a robust research operation that includes basic biomedical research that seeks to understand how the pediatric body works, and clinical and translational research that applies those discoveries to medical therapies and designs trials to assess their effectiveness. Johns Hopkins All Children’s leads Florida in patients who participate in trials through the Children’s Oncology Group, a worldwide collaboration among children’s hospitals. It is the only site in Florida that has been designated by the Children’s Oncology Group as a Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trials Network site. Johns Hopkins All Children’s also anchors many multi-center trials with collaborators around the world.

Johns Hopkins All Children’s has leading-edge research equipment, including the state’s only accredited pediatric biorepository, which stores biological specimens for use in research and will be leveraged in the grant for a proposed Florida Collaborative Childhood Cancer Predisposition Program: Protecting Children and Families Through Early Identification and Precision Prevention via a State-of-the-Art Registry and Biorepository Florida Collaborative.

“We have been building a culture of innovation and discovery,” Josephson says. “These new resources from the state will allow us to accelerate discoveries and cures creating brighter tomorrows for children throughout the state and beyond.”