Consortium Seeks New Therapies for Pediatric Brain Tumors

Texas Children's Cancer Center recently hosted the newly formed Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, a group of nine institutions from around the country seeking innovative therapies for children with brain malignancies.

"We have made tremendous strides in the treatment of many childhood cancers as far as identifying cures and effective therapies, but brain tumors are still one of our greatest challenges," says Dr. Susan Blaney, associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and principal investigator of the consortium at Texas Children's Cancer Center.

The National Cancer Institute will fund the network's endeavors, providing a total of $2 million a year for five years.

According to Dr. Blaney, pediatric brain tumors are the most common solid tumor of childhood. While survival rates depend on the type of tumor, the overall survival for children with malignant brain tumors is less than 50 percent, she says. The goal of the consortium is to rapidly develop protocols for new therapeutic agents targeting pediatric brain tumors with the hope of improving those survival rates.

The consortium's first study, recently opened for enrollment, was developed at the Texas Children's Cancer Center in collaboration with researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. This clinical trial will study a protocol to deliver chemotherapy into the spinal fluid as a means of treating babies diagnosed with brain tumors.

"We hope the benefit to this approach will be to decrease the chance of the brain tumor spreading throughout the nervous system," says Dr. Blaney, who will lead the study. "We also hope it will decrease the need for radiation to the spinal cord or at least delay the need for that." She adds that most children under 3 years of age do not receive radiation treatment because the side effects can be significant.

Dr. Blaney hopes to enroll a total of 80 infants under the age of 3 with certain types of tumors in the study, which will be conducted at all nine institutions in the consortium. The study will be carried out in two parts, the first of which will serve to identify the best dose of the intrathecal agent to be injected in the spinal fluid.

"There are no protocols for children with brain tumors right now that utilize this approach," says Dr. Blaney of the intrathecal therapy. "Most of the chemotherapy that we give does not get into the spinal fluid because the brain protects itself from side effects of medication."

For more information about enrollment in this study, call 1-800-CANCER-9.

At its March meeting, the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium outlined its next steps for research. In addition to the infant study, the consortium plans to conduct a study of a combination of therapeutic agents, one that is targeted at overcoming the resistance that many types of brain tumors develop, says Dr. Blaney. Researchers will also study the biology of tumors with the hope that effective therapies can be developed to target specific biological markers.

The consortium plans to meet twice a year as a group to discuss its progress. Once treatments appear effective in the consortium's studies, the research will move to a larger trial such as those conducted through the National Cancer Institute's Clinical Trials Cooperative Groups.

The Texas Children's Cancer Center is a joint effort of Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital. In addition to the Texas Children's Cancer Center, the other consortium members are: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston; Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.; St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tenn.; The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; Children's Hospital, Pittsburgh; University of California, San Francisco; Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle; and Children's National Medical Center, Washington, D.C.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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