Cancers Selected for Study

In 2007, more than 10,000 children were diagnosed with cancer. While some success has been made with treatments of certain types of cancers, a proportion of pediatric tumors are often difficult to treat. The Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) Initiative aims to uncover the genomic factors that distinguish groups of children with favorable prognoses from those that do not respond to treatment. Understanding these underlying genetic changes will help to more rapidly develop treatments that provide better outcomes for patients with high-risk disease, as well as finding better, more-targeted treatments for all who suffer from these diseases.

TARGET seeks to accelerate research in novel marker and drug development in the following childhood cancers:

• Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)
  Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a cancer of the white blood cells, the cells in the body that normally fight infections. ALL is the most common leukemia in children.
• Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
  Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a cancer marked by too many myeloblasts (as opposed to lymphoblasts).
• Neuroblastoma
  A cancer that arises in immature nerve cells of the sympathetic nervous system. Neuroblastoma affects mostly infants and children.
• Osteosarcoma
  A cancer of the bone that primarily affects children and adolescents.
• Wilms Tumor
  A cancer usually occurring in children under the age of five that begins with malignant cells in the kidney that can spread to the liver, lung and lymph nodes.

These tumor types were chosen because of the need to improve treatment options for many children with these diagnoses, the ongoing NCI-supported efforts to molecularly characterize these cancers, and the availability of clinically annotated, high-quality human tissue collections that met TARGET's strict scientific, technical, and ethical requirements.

Initially, the TARGET program concentrated on ALL and Neuroblastoma but American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding has facilitated an expansion to include additional patient populations for these cancers and add AML, osteosarcoma and Wilms tumor.