CURE’s goal is to advance precision medicine for every child with cancer.
Every child's tumor is genetically its own.
Treatment should be too.
Every child’s tumor is genetically its own.
Treatment should be too.
CURE’s goal is to advance precision medicine for every child with cancer.
One diagnosis. Many different diseases.
A cancer’s name – leukemia, neuroblastoma, sarcoma – tells you where it started. It doesn’t tell you what’s actually driving it. Inside the tumor, something has gone wrong at the genetic level: a gene has turned on when it shouldn’t be, and a mutation is telling cells to keep growing. That something can be completely different from one child to the next, even when the diagnosis on paper looks the same. That is why the same treatment can work for one child and fail for another with the same disease.
Precision medicine starts by sequencing a child’s tumor to find out what that something actually is.
A Majority
of pediatric tumors
show a clinically meaningful genetic finding – confirming a diagnosis, flagging an inherited risk, or explaining treatment resistance.
15%
are matched to a targeted drug
today, based on what sequencing finds. We expect this to grow as research uncovers more targets – and more drugs to block them.
That gap – between what we can detect and what we can treat – is exactly where more research closes the distance.
First, prove it. Then, scale it.
In 2017, it was still an open question whether sequencing every child’s tumor was worth doing. CURE partnered with the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA), one of the largest pediatric cancer programs in the country, to find out. At that scale, the program generated real proof, fast: in a published study, sequencing changed how doctors approached treatment in 85% of patients tested. Other major children’s hospitals were reaching similar conclusions around the same time. Together, that evidence is part of why tumor sequencing has moved from an open question to a widely accepted practice at leading centers nationwide.
85%
of patients in CHOA’s published study had treatment decisions impacted by sequencing
500+
children diagnosed with cancer at Aflac Cancer Center every year
2017
CURE’s $4.5M funding commitment to build the program
Meet Edward
After his neuroblastoma diagnosis, Edward went through years of chemotherapy, radiation, nine surgeries, and two bone marrow transplants. Cancer remained. Genetic testing through CURE’s Precision Medicine Program found a mutation with a drug known to work against it – and that drug put him into remission.
“If it weren’t for the use of precision medicine, I am confident that Edward would not be with us today.”
– Andrew, Edward’s father
Same program. Different answers.
Sequencing doesn’t always lead to a drug right away – but it always tells doctors something they didn’t know before.
Carter, age 6
A brain tumor first diagnosed as low-grade turned out, through sequencing, to be high-grade – meaning Carter’s original treatment wouldn’t have cured him. His tumor’s mutation was one usually seen in lung cancer, not brain cancer, but doctors found a drug already used to treat it. Combined with radiation, his tumor has been stable ever since.
Madeline, age 4
Madeline’s neuroblastoma tumor couldn’t be fully removed by surgery. Sequencing found a mutation linked to an aggressive form of the disease – information that didn’t change her treatment that day, but means doctors will know exactly what to watch for if her tumor ever becomes active again.
Where this goes next
Precision medicine won’t be the answer for every child – especially the cancers that have resisted treatment for decades. Those need new biology, not just better drug matching, and CURE funds that work too. But for the children sequencing does help, it’s the difference between a treatment chosen by trial and error and one chosen because we know what we’re treating.
