Childhood Cancers Awareness Month – September 2017

It’s Time to Roar!

September of every year is Childhood Cancers Awareness Month, a time to reflect on how far we’ve come in the battle against childhood cancers, but also a time to regroup and focus on how much more we need to achieve.

Cancer continues to kill more children than any other disease, with around 950 Australian children and teenagers diagnosed each year, and almost three dying every week. Childhood cancers can be very hard to treat, and many come with a high risk of mortality. Worldwide, an estimated 175,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year – in simple terms, a child is diagnosed with cancer somewhere in the world every two minutes.

 

These figures are shocking and unacceptable.   Investment in research into treatments for childhood cancers is imperative; childhood cancers have different causes to the cancers experienced by adults, and they come in different forms. It’s not simply a matter of applying smaller doses of adult treatments – kids with cancer need specific, tailored treatments if we are to ever beat these insidious diseases.

In Australia, an estimated one in 900 adults aged 16 – 45 years is a survivor of childhood cancer, and these days eight out of 10 children who are diagnosed with cancer will survive. These figures might sound fantastic – and when you compare it to the fact that 60 years ago almost no one survived childhood cancer – but unfortunately, surviving cancer comes with its own drawbacks. As many as 70% of those who survive childhood cancer go on to experience significant, chronic health conditions throughout their lives, with conditions such as infertility, neurocognitive disorders, hearing and vision loss very common among childhood cancer survivors, as well as secondary cancers. Sometimes this is due to the incredibly taxing treatments that the child has undergone to beat their cancer, but other times we just don’t know what the cause is.

Simply surviving cancer isn’t enough – we need to find the best treatments to help kids beat these diseases and thrive in their later lives. Unlike many adult cancers, childhood cancers have no link with lifestyle, and (so far) are not preventable. There’s nothing these kids can do to reduce their odds of acquiring cancer, so we need to do everything in our power to help them fight it.

At the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, we believe that the way we’re going to defeat childhood cancer is through Personalised Medicine. Personalised Medicine involves researchers sequencing the genomes of people with cancer to provide doctors with extraordinary, high-level information to better target treatments. Sequencing an individual’s genome – that is, their DNA – can reveal changes in genes that can lead to diseases, including cancer. It can also identify how an individual will respond to certain treatments.

Personalised Medicine is already being used to treat both adult and childhood cancers, but, unsurprisingly, this individualised approach comes at a huge financial cost. 

Garvan and Lions Partnership

To further the work in this field, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has teamed up with The Lions Club to form the ‘Lions Kids Cancer Genome Project’, which seeks to sequence the genomes of 400 children with high risk, aggressive cancers. These children will then be able to access the best possible treatment options for their specific cancers. The added bonus is that having this kind of detailed information on 400 individuals with cancer will provide an incredible database of information that can be used by researchers and doctors all around the world.

The Australian Lions Childhood Cancer Research Foundation and the Lions Club International Foundation (LCIF) have generously committed $3.2 million to fund this project, with another $800,000 needing to be fundraised. So far, around $75,000 of that target has been raised by generous and committed members of the Lions community.

This project will enable Garvan to work with the Children’s Cancer Institute to help kids with cancer all over the world to have a better chance at a long and healthy life.

Click to find out more, or to get involved in some fundraising activities.