The main areas of research activity for 2001 can be briefly summarized as follows:

The NCI is sponsoring development of a national pediatric cancer registry and research network (the Children’s Cancer research Network, CCRN), and Dr.s Buckley, Deapen, and Bernstein at USC are playing key roles in the establishment of the registry. This resource is expected to provide the central focus for a broad range of research into the incidence and cause of childhood cancers in the U.S. and Canada. In the last year, USC investigators carried out feasibility studies for this registry; in particular a record linkage study to determine the overlap between state- and regional-based registries and the Children’s Oncology Group, with respect to registration of newly diagnosed cancer.

This study, described in the last report (Buckley, PI), is on-going. This project enrolls newly diagnosed cases for mother and father interviews; controls come from a random-digit-diling procedure and also from a friend control. Cases and friend controls provide a pre-treatment blood sample that is being used to determine the frequency of aberrant VDJ-mediated mutations on peripheral lymphocytes. Other CCG related studies include a proposed case-control study of brain tumors (VanTornout and Buckley) and two studies being conducted out of the University of Minnesota (Julie Ross, P.I.) for which Dr. Buckley is a co-investigator (a case-control study of Downs syndrome/leukemia and an infant leukemia case/control study to examine the role of exposure to topoisomerase inhibitors).

Dr. Preston-Martin's area of interest is childhood brain tumors. She continues to direct the analysis of data from a multi-national case-control study of brain tumors, including 1218 cases & 2223 controls at 9 centers.

Dr. Van Tornout’s research is focused on identification of polymorphisms that confer genetic susceptibility, and interactions with environmental risk factors, in childhood cancer. Current projects include studies of neuroblastoma, brain tumors, and Ewing’s sarcoma. An R01 application has been submitted to study selected metabolic polymorphisms in children with brain tumors where the involvement of MTHFR raises the intriguing possibility of a gene-environment interaction between this key enzyme of folate metabolism and level of folate intake during pregnancy. This project includes Dr. Gauderman, from the Biostatistics Core, as a co-investigator.

Dr. Bhatia has received funding from the NIH to identify and characterize all second neoplasms developing among patients treated according to the Chlidren’s Oncology Group (COG) protocols, with the aims of identifying diagnosed 1983, and characterizing the patients with respect to the primary malignancy (pathology, stage), demographic characteristics, and treatment protocol, with emphasis on agents known or suspected to be carcinogenic. This information will be used to determine the incidence of SMNs and associated risk and to explore gene-environment interactions. Tumor tissue for both the primary and secondary tumors, and a blood sample will be obtained to support future molecular studies.

The causes of childhood cancer remains largely unknown. Members of the Childhood Cancer Core are conducting a broad range of studies aimed at identifying and characterizing environmental exposures that contribute to cancer risk, while at the same time using molecular tools to explore genetic factors and their interactions with the environment. Clearly, this research has the potential to have significant public health impact. Highest priority at this time is to establish the Children’s Cancer Research Network. The cooperative group environment has become less and less conducive to epidemiological research, due to competing priorities and administrative overload within the group. The CCRN will provide a streamlined process to ascertain and enroll cases onto epidemiological and biology studies, and through linkage with State and Regional cancer registries will provide a population basis for future research.