Research

In 1970, a child diagnosed with leukemia had a very slim chance of survival. Today, the most common type of leukemia has a cure rate of 70 to 90 percent. The reason: research. With support from the Children’s Oncology Group, a national multi-institutional team studying cancer in children, physicians and researchers from the Hematology/Oncology Division are conducting world-renowned research to determine why some children develop cancers, to create innovative cancer treatments and to discover cures for childhood cancers.

Several Hematology/Oncology physician-scientists also receive funding support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the federal agency that conducts, supports and coordinates biomedical research in the United States. Ongoing NIH-funded oncology research projects include the study of critical biochemical events that control the growth, maturation and death of cells that cause leukemia and the study of a family of genes that cause cancers such as Burkitt’s lymphoma and neuroblastoma.

Another ongoing oncology research project at Children’s involves the study of graft-versus-host disease following unrelated donor stem cell transplantation. In addition, Hematology/Oncology researchers are studying various treatment options for pediatric blood disorders such as severe aplastic anemia and sickle cell disease.