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Pediatric cancer research thriving thanks to Four Diamonds

Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

While outcomes for children diagnosed with cancer have improved greatly over the past five decades, one-in-five children will still die from their disease. In the United States, more children die from cancer than any other disease.

Investigators at the Four Diamonds Pediatric Cancer Research Center at Penn State Children’s Hospital are working to change that.

Four Diamonds supports more than 80 pediatric cancer research professionals who are working to identify more effective therapies that increase cure rates and minimize long-term side effects by studying how cancer forms and developing new targeted treatments.

“With Four Diamonds support we have been able to continually expand our research,” said Dr. Barbara Miller, division chief, pediatric oncology and hematology and director of the Four Diamonds Research Center. “We conduct laboratory-based research to better understand disease mechanisms in pediatric cancer and to identify potential targets in the molecular disease process to which new drugs can be directed.”

Funding from Four Diamonds has helped finance development of a Pediatric Neuro-oncology Program, a Pediatric Cancer Survivorship Program, a Stem Cell Transplant Program, an Experimental Therapeutics Program, a fellowship training program, as well as the Research Center itself.

The money raised for the Clinical Experimental Therapeutics Program allows investigators to conduct phase one and phase two trials for pediatric cancer patients.

Learn more about Four Diamonds support for pediatric cancer research in this Penn State Medicine article.

Last Updated August 17, 2017

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