Child cancer network

During the  60-70-80ties, the primary focus was on the curation of the patients. However, with a growing cohort of survivors of pediatric cancer, we learnt that treatment comes at the price of both acute and late toxicities. Therefore, much of the focus of current research is to increase treatment efficacy, whilst at the same time not adding the treatment-related toxicity. This can be achieved for instance in clinical treatment studies that evaluate de-escalation of treatment-intensity is specific patients groups (often based on the genetic basis of the disease and/or treatment responses), whilst maintaining similar curation. Further, there is a large research focus on finding more targeted treatment modalities with a higher specificity to target tumorous cells compared to the more classical chemotherapy. That latter would either lead to increased treatment efficacy, decreases treatment toxicity, or both.

The purpose of the LUCC-Child network is to:

• create a meeting platform for clinicians to meet preclinical researchers and educate each other about the the different aspects of their work
• to encourage cooperation between different researchers, or between clinicians and researches within our network with the ultimate goal of improving the outcomes and quality of life of child cancer patients.