Collaborators

Each of the cancer types selected for research by the TARGET Initiative is studied by a collaborative network of researchers at several world-class institutions, including well-established children's hospitals and pediatric research centers in the pediatric oncology field. Within the National Cancer Institute (NCI), TARGET is led by the Office of Cancer Genomics (OCG) and the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) in the Division of Cancer Therapy and Diagnosis (DCTD). TARGET collaborators work integrally with NCI and the Children's Oncology Group (COG) to perform various roles from gene sequencing and profiling to providing clinically annotated, high-quality tissue samples that meet TARGET's strict scientific, technical and ethical requirements.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia and neuroblastoma have been the focus of TARGET since its initiation. Thanks to funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), additional tumor types and characterization platforms, including the use of second-generation sequencing technology, were added to the TARGET Initiative in late 2009.

To learn more about the TARGET collaborators, select a cancer type or continue reading below.

• Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL)
• Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
• Neuroblastoma
• Osteosarcoma
• Wilms Tumor

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL)

ALL is the most common cancer found in children. The TARGET initiative established a High Risk (HR) ALL pilot project team to utilize comprehensive genomic approaches and high-throughput gene resequencing to identify new therapeutic targets for pediatric HR ALL. In the next phase of this project, the ALL TARGET project team will analyze a separate group of childhood B-precursor ALL cases, focusing on those with early relapse (less than 36 months from diagnosis) in order to identify new genomic changes that are associated with treatment failure and to identify novel therapeutic targets. Leukemia cells from the new group will be analyzed for copy number alterations, loss of heterozygosity status, gene expression profiles and epigenetic methylation changes.

University of Colorado

• Stephen Hunger, M.D. (Principal Investigator)

University of California, San Francisco

• Mignon Loh, M.D. (Co-investigator)

University of New Mexico Cancer Center

• Cheryl Willman, M.D. (Co-Investigator)

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

• James Downing, M.D. (Co-Investigator)
• Mary Relling, Pharm.D. (Co-Investigator)
• Charles Mullighan, M.D., M.Sc. (Co-Investigator)

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)

AML is the second most common leukemia arising in children, and although five-year survival rates now exceed 50%, this outcome is still less than that observed for children with other types of leukemia, like acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The AML TARGET project team will determine copy number alterations, loss of heterozygosity status, gene expression profiles and epigenetic methylation status in a carefully defined group of patients with AML. This group will be selected to represent patients with no known genetic markers for this disease but who have relapsed after achieving an initial remission. Comprehensive molecular characterization of the leukemia cells from this group of AML patients will have a high likelihood of identifying novel genomic and epigenetic alterations associated with treatment failure in children with AML.

Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center

• Robert Arceci, M.D., Ph.D. (Co-Principal Investigator)

Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center

• Soheil Meshinchi, M.D., Ph.D. (Co-Principal Investigator)

Neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is a type of cancer that arises in immature nerve cells of the sympathetic nervous system and affects mostly infants and children. The TARGET Neuroblastoma project team will complete molecular characterization of high-risk neuroblastoma to discover tractable therapeutic targets. In the first phase of the project, a collection of richly annotated, high-risk neuroblastoma samples was characterized for copy number alterations, loss of heterozygosity, exon-specific mRNA profiling and targeted resequencing of 117 genes. The next phase will include the characterization of the high-risk neuroblastoma epigenome and defining the microRNA expression profile.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

• John Maris, M.D. (Principal Investigator)

Children's Hospital of Los Angeles

• Robert Seeger, M.D. (Co- Principal Investigator)

National Cancer Institute

• Javed Khan, M.D. (Intramural NCI Lead Investigator)

Osteosarcoma

Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer arising in pediatric patients and occurs primarily in adolescents and young adults. Five-year survival for osteosarcoma is less than 70%, and there has been little or no improvement in survival rates over the past decade. The TARGET osteosarcoma project is built on a panel of high quality, clinically well-annotated osteosarcoma cases that will be used to perform comprehensive genome characterizations. Many of the cases have been previously characterized by gene expression and copy number profiling through the NCI-funded Director's Challenge project "Molecular Classification of Osteosarcoma", SPECS project "Diagnostic and Prognostic Sarcoma Signatures" and Department Of Defense project "COG Translational Research Committee Core Laboratory". Further characterization performed through the osteosarcoma TARGET project team will include microRNA and methylation profiling.

Texas Children's Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine

• Ching Lau, M.D., Ph.D. (Principal Investigator)

National Cancer Institute

• Paul Meltzer, M.D., Ph.D. (Intramural NCI Lead Investigator)

Wilms Tumor

Wilms Tumor is a cancer that usually occurs in children under the age of five beginning with malignant cells in the kidney that can spread to the liver, lung and lymph nodes. While most children with Wilms tumor have a favorable outcome, there is a subset of children (e,g., those with anaplastic tumors) for which outcome is much less favorable. The Wilms tumor TARGET project focuses on tumors from patients at high risk for poor outcome with standard therapy, including patients who have disease recurrence and patients with unfavorable (anaplastic) histology Wilms tumor. The Wilms tumor TARGET project team will assess genomic gains and losses, define transcription patterns (including miRNA expression) and determine DNA methylation patterns in both types of high-risk patients. The carefully selected Wilms tumor TARGET patient group should provide important insights into the biology of treatment failure for Wilms tumor, which will in turn provide key leads for defining more-effective treatments for high-risk Wilms tumor.

Children's Memorial Medical Center (Northwestern University)

• Elizabeth Perlman, M.D. (Principal Investigator)

Children's Oncology Group

• Peter Adamson, M.D. (Chair)

The TARGET program is a collaboration with the Children's Oncology Group (COG). The following are the specific groups involved in this important research:

• COG Chair's Office: Bethesda, MD
• COG Biopathology Center: Columbus, OH
• COG Group Operations and COG Statistics & Data Centers: Arcadia, CA

Data Coordinating Center

All data generated by the project is deposited into a publicly accessible database. The TARGET Data Portal is managed centrally by the Data Coordinating Center and is powered by caBIG^® compatible tools.

NCI Center for Bioinformatics and Information Technology

• Tanja Davidsen, Ph.D.
• Patee Gesuwan

National Cancer Institute (NCI)

The TARGET initiative is coordinated by two offices within the NCI.

Division of Cancer Therapy and Diagnosis

• Malcolm A. Smith, M.D., Ph.D.

Office of Cancer Genomics

• Daniela S. Gerhard, Ph.D. (Director)
• Jaime M. Guidry Auvil, Ph.D. (Project Manager)