With an $8.9 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, nine institutions have joined forces to develop and test new treatments for neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer that only strikes children. The principal investigator of the NCI project program grant to develop those new therapies is Robert C. Seeger, MD, of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. UCSF pediatric oncologist Katherine K. Matthay, MD, is principal investigator of the clinical consortium, New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT), which aims to bring to the bedside the most promising strategies to improve the outcome of children with this disease.
Neuroblastoma is the most common cancer among infants and the second most common solid tumor malignancy in children under five. At the time they are diagnosed, 45 percent of affected children have high-risk disease, with the cancer often spreading throughout the body. A nationwide Phase III clinical trial led by Matthay, who is director of pediatric clinical oncology at the Children's Medical Center at UCSF, last year showed a three-fold improvement in disease-free survival from high-risk neuroblastoma due to a new combination of therapies. But even with this improvement, only 40 percent of children with the most dangerous form of neuroblastoma survive for five years without a recurrence.
"In spite of the best therapies we have available, neuroblastoma recurs in many children affected by it, and those children have a poor prognosis," said Matthay. "That is why we formed this new consortium."
Seeger, who is professor of hematology/oncology and deputy director of research at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and the Department of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, said that the NCI project program grant will allow investigators at the nine institutions to share research information and potentially speed the development of strategies that will e
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Contact: Janet Basu
jbasu@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557
University of California - San Francisco
11-Jun-2000