CONTROL
INTRODUCTION
Childhood cancers are a major public health challenge. Annually, 35,000 childhood cancers are diagnosed in Europe alone, and they account directly for 1-in-5 childhood deaths after infancy. In addition, most survivors are burdened by long-term serious physical and psychosocial late effects that significantly impact on the quality of life of both patients and close relatives.
Therapy at all four Danish pediatric oncology departments follow international trials and guidelines for diagnostics and therapy. However, there is a need for better understanding of host factors, improved diagnostics based on tumor biology, and novel treatment strategies to address the many challenges associated with childhood cancers from etiology across tumor biology and treatment resistance to side effects and rehabilitation.
By integrating basic, epidemiological, and clinical research with nationwide organizational and interventional strategies, we established a Research Center for Childhood Oncology with the ambition to:
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explore cancer etiology and provide surveillance strategies for children with cancer prone syndromes (CPS)
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improve diagnostics, including mapping of tumor biology
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develop novel treatment strategies
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increase overall childhood cancer 5-year survival to at least 90%
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reduce occurrence and severity of late effects for survivors to improve quality of life
The research team behind CONTROL has the necessary expertise and experience to successfully plan and complete all the sub-studies described in the 17 work packages (WPs). All sub-studies are nationwide supported and often anchored internationally.
MOTIVATION
Today we have unprecedented research and organizational opportunities to address the health challenges faced by childhood cancer patients due to:
- access to population-based registries covering large patient cohorts across multiple cancer types as well as the total background population, which provides extensive and unbiased data on exposures and family disease history along with somatic and psychosocial outcomes
- cost-effective DNA-/RNA-sequencing (RNAseq) and other -omics platforms and advanced bioinformatics tools that can provide insight into cancer predisposition, the mutational germline-tumor continuum, host and tumor biology, and drug pharmacology
- appropriate animal models for preclinical research
- well established network in pediatric oncology and wide international collaboration
CONTROL is a part of Danish Comprehensive Cancer Center - DCCC - a national, binding colaboration on cancer research and treatment.
