Improving the treatment for childhood cancer: Neuroblastoma as a model

每三个患有癌症的儿童中就有一个死于癌症，而且治疗的副作用很大。在过去的15年里，首席调查员已经确立了自己在儿童癌症方面的国际领先研究小组的地位，并成功地将他们基于实验室的发现应用于改善患有恶性疾病的儿童的临床管理。特别是，在基础细胞生物学、分子生物学以及确定儿童癌症和神经母细胞瘤的临床相关分子靶点和预后指标方面取得了关键进展，神经母细胞瘤是幼儿最常见的实体肿瘤。这些发现是由该团队近年来组装了广泛而独特的体外和体内模型系统以及大量临床神经母细胞瘤标本而实现的。在这项研究计划中，团队成员提出了一种实验方法，将继续他们的研究，专注于癌症的启动和更好的癌细胞内靶点识别，导致开发有效和无毒的新化合物，可能的预防策略，并将新疗法引入临床试验。

One in three children with cancer still die of their disease, and side-effects of treatment are considerable. Over the past 15 years, the Chief Investigators have established themselves as a leading international research group in child cancer and have successfully applied their laboratory-based discoveries to improve the clinical management of children with malignant diseases. In particular, key advances have been made in basic cell biology, molecular biology and in defining clinically relevant molecular targets and prognostic indicators for the child cancer, neuroblastoma, the commonest solid tumour in young children. These findings have been made possible by the team assembling, over recent years, an extensive and unique range of in vitro and in vivo model systems, together with a large bank of clinical neuroblastoma specimens. In this research program, the team members propose an experimental approach that will continue their studies, focussing on cancer initiation and better target identification within cancer cells, leading to the development of effective and non-toxic novel compounds, possibly prevention strategies,and introduction of novel therapies into clinical trial.