A loving, funny and smart 2-year-old, Yuvaan “Yuvi” Tiwari’s life changed in the blink of an eye. A busy toddler always trying to keep up with his older brothers and excited to start preschool, Yuvi was diagnosed in December 2020 with diffuse midline glioma (DMG), an aggressive and fatal pediatric brain tumor.
The untreatable Grade 4 tumor grew 20% within 10 days of diagnosis. For the next seven months, Yuvi showed incredible courage, grace and positivity as he endured radiation therapy, multiple surgeries, countless doctor visits and MRIs, and several hospital stays. Yuvi passed away at home on July 30, 2021.
Yuvi’s parents, Parvati and Satya Tiwari, established the Yuvaan Tiwari Foundation to keep their son’s spirit alive and bring the most promising treatments for fatal pediatric brain cancers to patients as quickly as possible. The foundation’s $1 million gift to the Michigan Medicine Chad Carr Pediatric Brain Tumor Center will support research led by Carl Koschmann, M.D., pediatric neuro-oncologist and researcher at the Rogel Cancer Center and C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.
The funding is supporting an investigative study that will attempt to bring into the clinic a drug that targets a protein called EGFR and could offer a treatment opportunity for children with brain tumors. Yuvi’s tumor carried an EGFR genetic mutation, but there was a lack of options in this class of drugs to treat him and other children with this mutation.
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