About childhood cancer

Although childhood cancer is rare, it is the second most frequent case of death after accidants before the age 15. As cancer in childhood age belongs to orphan diseases, it does not evoke a great deal of interest by the pharmaceutical companies in investing in research and development of new treatment options for it. Relatively little is also known about its causes. Childhood cancer is not a single disease - there are many different types. Compared to adult cancers, children neoplasms tend to have different histologies and occur in different sites of the body. Common adult cancers such as lung, breast, colon, and stomach are extremely rare among children. On the other hand some types of cancer are almost exclusively found in children, especially embryonal tumours that arise from cells associated with the foetus, embryo and developing body.

Over the past 20 years, there has been an increase in the incidence of children diagnosed with all forms of invasive cancer, from 11.5 cases per 100,000 children in 1975 to 14.8 per 100,000 children in 2004. During this same time, however, death rates declined dramatically and 5-year survival rates increased for most childhood cancers. For example, the 5-year survival rates for all childhood cancers combined, increased from 58.1 percent in 1975–77 to 79.6 percent in 1996–2003. This improvement in survival rates is due to significant advances in diagnosis as well as treatment of these diseases.

Although survival rates for childhood cancer have risen sharply over the past 25 years, a large number of children are not cured. Further,the chemotherapy that is successively used for survivors often has serious long-term repercussions.

For this reason the search for and development of new drugs specially targeted to childhood cancers are a high priority.