Cancer treatment tailored to an individual child’s condition can lead to significant remission, a new study has found, giving hope to millions of children and their families. The study was a part of Australia ’s national precision medicine programme for children suffering from cancer, involving over 100 scientists and clinicians working together across nine child cancer centres. The programme, which began in 2017, is focused on finding new treatment options for children with high-risk cancers.
Precision medicine using genome sequencing is superior to standard therapy for the survival of children, even those with aggressive cancers, according to the new study published in the journal Nature Medicine . “These are very exciting results which we believe have important implications for the treatment of children with cancer, ” David Ziegler, chair of clinical trials for the Zero Childhood Cancer Programme and an author of the study, said. Cancer is the main cause of disease-related death in children in most developed countries.
At least a quarter of children diagnosed with aggressive high-risk cancers have a five-year survival rate of less than 30 per cent, researchers said. But precision medicine for their cancers appears to significantly improve their odds of survival, they added. In this approach, clinicians use genetic or molecular profiling techniques to optimise treatment to the best efficiency and therapeutic benefit of patients.
The method matches treatments to indi.