Initially, the big picture looks severe: Pediatric brain tumors are now the number one cause of death for children diagnosed with cancer.
Though leukemia is four times more common in pediatric patients than brain tumors, about 90% of children diagnosed with leukemia will experience a cure “because we’ve done such a good job of researching leukemia, and treatments have come so far that cure rates have improved significantly,” says Rajeev Vibhakar, MD, PhD, MPH, a professor of pediatric hematology and oncology in the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “We need to see that same level of support and advancement in finding cures for pediatric brain tumors.”
Vibhakar, who leads the Morgan Adams Pediatric Brain Tumor Research Program in the CU Cancer Center, says that while the data present a very serious picture of pediatric brain tumors’ place among all childhood cancers, research and innovations happening at the CU Cancer Center offer a lot of reasons for hope.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, so we asked Vibhakar to highlight some of the innovative work being done to conquer pediatric brain tumors.