FORT WORTH, Texas — August 2026 — Rutledge Cancer Foundation (RCF) is advancing an ambitious new approach to Ewing sarcoma research through its $1.5 million ACES Grant (Advancing Cures for Ewing Sarcoma), a three-year initiative bringing together leading researchers from John Hopkins and National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue new treatment strategies for one of the most difficult-to-treat cancers affecting children, adolescents and young adults.
The work — recently highlighted by CNBC — includes research toward a personalized immune-enabling vaccine that targets the unique genetic characteristics of a patient’s cancer. The vaccine is being developed specifically for patients with hard-to-cure, metastatic Ewing sarcoma and is intended to be administered before recurrence, when there may be an opportunity to help the immune system recognize and fight remaining cancer cells.
This approach represents exactly what the ACES Grant was created for, by five women who lost their own children to Ewing sarcoma: bringing leading researchers together to encourage, collaborate and accelerate promising science that has the potential to change outcomes for patients who urgently need better options.
“For patients with metastatic Ewing sarcoma, we cannot be satisfied with the options that exist today,” said RCF Founder Laura Rutledge. “ACES is about pursuing the science that has the potential to bring lasting remission or even a cure. This research is innovative, highly personalized and focused on a group of patients who desperately need new treatment strategies.”
Ewing sarcoma is a rare and aggressive cancer that primarily affects children, adolescents and young adults. While outcomes have improved for patients with localized disease, metastatic and recurrent Ewing sarcoma remain especially difficult to treat.
Through ACES, RCF is investing in research aimed at changing that trajectory.
The $1.5 million, three-year grant represents RCF’s largest research investment to date and builds upon the Foundation’s longstanding commitment to funding innovative research for sarcomas and other solid tumors. Rather than supporting individual projects in isolation, ACES was designed to foster collaboration among researchers and institutions, allowing discoveries, expertise and data to move more quickly toward meaningful advances for patients.
CNBC recently featured the ACES initiative and Rutledge’s personal connection to the work, bringing national attention to both the research and the urgency behind it.
Founded in Fort Worth in 2011, Rutledge Cancer Foundation works to ease the impact of cancer for adolescents and young adults, raise survival rates and find a cure for sarcomas and other solid tumors. Over the past 15 years, RCF has served more than 20,000 adolescents and young adults impacted by cancer and invested more than $3.6 million in patient programs and research.
For RCF, the ACES Grant represents the next evolution of that mission: moving beyond helping young people navigate cancer today to investing in discoveries that could fundamentally change what is possible for patients tomorrow.
