Today marks the start of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which we celebrate every year to support and learn more about kids with cancer, their loving families, the doctors and caregivers who look after them and treat them, the young survivors of cancer and those kids and teens who lost their battle, and the scientists who working hard to find a way to stop childhood cancer.
Childhood cancer is an umbrella term for many other types of this disease. Every 100th cancer patient is a child. Cancer is the 2nd most common cause of death among children after accidents. When it comes to a disease, we have to acknowledge that children are not little adults. They are constantly developing. So their diseases have different ways of progressing and responding to treatment. The causes of childhood cancer, including neuroblastoma, are not known. It would be right to expect more blind alleys and failed ideas in understanding these cancers. To address these challenges, more curiosity-driven and translationally focused research is needed.
The most common childhood cancers:
- Leukaemia and lymphoma (blood cancers)
- Brain and other central nervous system tumours
- Muscle cancer (rhabdomyosarcoma)
- Kidney cancer (Wilms tumour)
- Neuroblastoma (tumour of the non-central nervous system)
- Bone cancer (osteosarcoma)
- Testicular and ovarian tumours (gonadal germ cell tumours)