As a dad who lost a son at 12 (2013) to bone cancer and as a brother who lost a sister at 15 (1996) to brain cancer I pray we will finally start funding pediatric cancer above the 4% rate of Federal Cancer Research and the 1% that American Cancer Society give to pediatric cancer research.
There has been 4 whole new chemo treatments in the past 25 years for pediatric cancer patients compared to the frequency adult community. The issue is that every cell in children is growing. So in an older adult you can more easily focus growing cells. What works for children will work better for adults with the probability of less side effects.
I work as part of a group looking for agents that target childhood cancers funded by the National Cancer Institute. We look for compounds that selectively target certain childhood cancer cell types while not affecting other childhood cancer cell lines. We have found some promising leads so far with great selectivity. I don't know what this comment is about, but just wanted you to know that people are working hard on it.
I appreciate and love all the researchers, doctors, nurses who are working on beating cancer and giving children their lives back.
I am angry at the LACK of FUNDS and thus the lack of new approved treatments for children over the last 25 years. There shouldn't be a need for St. Baldrick's and other organizations to fill the hole that left by the government, and non-profit cancer societies. They have left the children out of the cancer research and instead other's must step in.
I'm sorry to hear that. Cancer is horrible at any age, and I've never lost a family member as young as that to cancer, but I can only imagine that it must be even more horrible when its somebody you love that still would have had a whole life to live. We can only hope that child cancer research improves.
As a brother who lost a sister to juvenile brain cancer as well, I have been searching for methods of helping the folks working on the problem. Outside of brain tumor non-profit foundations, have you found other channels to help? I am even thinking leaving ad-tech to work in bio-tech.
St. Bladrick's is my favorite organization for funding for research and they actually helped fund a project that actually turned out to be a great new treatment for children with neroblastoma (Which has killed several of our friends' children).
Why is the funding so low relative to oncology research in general? Does the FDA not allow pediatric cancer therapies to be developed as orphaned drugs or is the growing nature of a child really make it that difficult to target pediatric cancers? Is it because cancer is far more common in the elderly who have much more political leverage?
I imagine there are multiple reasons why developing therapies for children is more difficult, but what would be the adequate level of funding? Less than 0.25% of cancer deaths correspond to patients younger than 20 when diagnosed (and I guess the low incidence is one of the reasons why developing new treatments is difficult).
It is 100% about the numbers. 43 children in America are diagnosed with cancer everyday. 5 children die everyday and it is the number one cause of death for children. 40,000 children every year are being treated. BUT that pales to just lung cancer with 610 diagnosis per day and 427 deaths per day.
I still say that is these are not a good reasons to keep the funding so low.
1) Treatments for Children are immediately beneficial to adults BUT treatments for adults would take at least 7 years but the cast majority they would be unlikely to be of any benefit to children.
2) Treatments for Children will also have less side effects and fewer long term side effects.
3) Children are at the age of around 6 years old when diagnosed and have 60 years+ of a positive life. 2% of lung cancer patients are under 45 years old and average age is 70 on the day of diagnosis.
4) Ethical: If you had a choice for your life to be saved or a child's life but only one of you can have could live what would you chose? If you saw a child about to get hit by a car but it was unclear if you intervene if you would make it would you just stand to the side? I think most of us would hope we would choose the kids. Why are we not doing this when we can actually sit down and think about it?
If it is all about the numbers, can anyone tell me the what is the threshold that a government is willing to spend to save a human life? What is the base threshold and multipliers for e.g. a US embassy-employee in Libya or a kid in Wyoming? I am sure insurance companies have some figures.
There has been 4 whole new chemo treatments in the past 25 years for pediatric cancer patients compared to the frequency adult community. The issue is that every cell in children is growing. So in an older adult you can more easily focus growing cells. What works for children will work better for adults with the probability of less side effects.
Those interested int he history of childhood cancer here is a good short history and why we are so helpful for immutheraphy. https://www.stbaldricks.org/blog/post/the-history-of-childho...