South Texas Pediatric Minority Based CCOP

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The South Texas Pediatric Minority-Based Community Clinical Oncology Program (STP-MB-CCOP) was first formed in 1990, and is currently in its 17th year of funding and is one of two solely pediatric CCOPs in the United States. The Principal Investigator of the STP-MB-CCOP has traditionally been a physician in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA). The STP-MB-CCOP operates as a consortium of 4 pediatric institutions: 1) CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Children's Hospital (CSRCH) (San Antonio, TX); 2) Driscoll Children's Hospital (Corpus Christi, TX); 3) Methodist Children's Hospital (San Antonio, TX), and 4) the U.S. Army pediatric oncology program at Wilford Hall Medical Center (San Antonio, TX). The STP-MB-CCOP will continue to provide access to the highest standard of care (i.e. access to clinical trials) to the youth population of South Texas affected by cancer. In addition, it will continue to expand its wings in regards to population-based studies dealing with health and socio-economic issues specific to the population of South Texas. It will target the orphans of cancer care delivery (i.e. adolescents and young adults with cancer) in order to understand and abolish the barriers interfering with their access to clinical trials and survival. It will concentrate on bringing access to clinical trials to pediatric cancer patients residing in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. It will further assess the impact of obesity on the survival of ALL patients by addressing issues such as: 1) genetics of obesity; 2) possible impact of obesity on the development of ALL; 3) impact of obesity on liver function and metabolism of chemotherapy agents used to treat ALL; and 4) impact of obesity on later development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in ALL survivors. It will serve as a clinical base for genetic studies characterizing the pediatric cancer population in border population including genetic admixture and polymorphism studies in genes influencing both cancer risks and outcomes. It will be used to develop additional pilot studies that will address the uniqueness (biologic or socio-economic) of the youth population of South Texas affected by cancer.