Fast-tracking new treatment for childhood cancer

An untreated neuroblastoma cell.

Children fighting a life-threatening form of cancer could be treated with a revolutionary anti-cancer therapy as early as next year, following the formation of a research alliance to fast-track development of a medicine pioneered by Australian researchers.

The Children’s Oncology Drug Alliance (CODA) unites the research and resources of UNSW Australia and its commercialisation arm, NewSouth Innovations, childhood cancer research charity The Kids’ Cancer Project, ASX-listed Australian biotechnology-company Novogen, and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, to accelerate development of a treatment purpose-built for neuroblastoma – the most common form of cancer in infancy.

Currently there is no medicine approved to treat neuroblastoma, a cancer that affects up to 100 children in Australia and around 650 in the United States each year. Childhood cancers – which claim the lives of three Australian children every week – are currently treated with chemotherapies that have been developed for adults…