Cancer Cure News: Zero Childhood Cancer Initiative Launched in Australia
The Zero Childhood Cancer initiative launched in Australia on Monday. The personalized cancer treatment trial is part of a greater scheme to bring down the childhood cancer death rate to zero.
Terminally ill kids in Australia, over 400 of them, will receive personalized cancer treatments through genetic screening of individual cancer cells and tumors. Participants of the trail should receive the latest treatments that are catered to their personal medical needs.
Children with less than 30 percent survival rate are the chosen respondents for the national trial.
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The trial seeks to identify the best possible way to treat each child's cancer. Samples will have to pass through a complex process where they will be tested against hundreds of anti-cancer drugs to determine the most effective treatment for an individual's cancer. Australia's sickest children will participate in the national trial over the next three years.
The program has begun in Sydney, directed by the Kids Cancer Centre of the Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick and Children's Cancer Institute. Other cities within the country are expected to follow suit in the succeeding months.
"This is a program for the kids who have little chance of surviving their cancer," said Professor Michelle Haber, Executive Director of Children's Cancer Institute. "Nearly 60 years ago every child that was diagnosed with cancer died, now the overall survival rate is about 80 percent."
Through medical research, Haber stated, the reduced death rate has been made possible. Currently, about three children and adolescents succumb to their disease each week. Like many medical researchers, Harber hopes to bring the survival rate up to 100 percent.
The Zero Childhood Cancer initiative is an ambitious project involving the best and brightest minds in the medical field. Hopefully, this pool of minds will discover groundbreaking cures for incurable cancers.
