Childhood Cancer

The Hutchinson Center is committed to research that yields safe and effective treatments for cancer's youngest victims. Accomplishments include:

• Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia — Unprecedented disease-free survival rates of 76 percent for treatment of infants in first remission of acute lymphoblastic leukemia — the most common cancer in this age group — using total-body irradiation followed by a bone-marrow transplant.

  Read more about acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

• Cyclopamine — A chemical called cyclopamine, which blocks growth signals produced by a protein involved in development, was found to stop medulloblastoma tumors in mice and kill medulloblastoma cells taken from human patients. Medulloblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer in children.

  Read more about cyclopamine.

• Transplants with Unrelated Donors — Research that shows that bone-marrow transplantation between tissue-matched, unrelated individuals is a viable option for young children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer. For younger patients, this allows doctors to be more aggressive in terms of accepting patients for transplant rather than continuing to treat them with less effective chemotherapy.

  Read more about transplants.

• Brain-Cancer Clues — Identification of a gene in mice that is necessary for normal brain development and may contribute to the most common form of primary brain tumors in children. This discovery may lead to new ways to treat or prevent the disease.

  Read more about brain-cancer clues.