St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, located in Memphis, Tennessee, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the institution continues to lead in clinical research for childhood cancer. One study St. Jude has launched is an ambitious effort to identify the causes of some of the most difficult and poorly understood childhood cancers. Known as the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital—Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, the three-year endeavor is using 21st century technology to decipher the complete normal and cancer genomes of 600 young patients with some of the toughest cancers.
The Project is already yielding significant results. Findings include clues to understanding and possibly improving treatment of several cancers, including an aggressive subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).The subtype is known as early T-cell precursor ALL or ETP-ALL. Although overall long-term survival is now 94 percent for ALL patients treated at St. Jude, the prognosis is much worse for patients with ETP-ALL. The new findings suggest patients in this subgroup might benefit from the addition of drugs developed for treatment of the blood cancer acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Pediatric Cancer Genome Project researchers have also identified new mutations at work in an aggressive brain tumor as well as in adolescents and young adults with neuroblastoma. The results are fueling efforts to find new, more selective therapies for these cancers. Learn more about the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project.
