Saturday, February 04, 2012

The Children's Oncology Group

Everything now known about the cure of children with cancer has been learned from research. The Children's Oncology Group grew out of several cooperative research groups established by the National Cancer Institute in 1955. COG members have been the primary innovators in new treatments for children with cancer.

COG consists of more than 2,000 physicians that provide multi-specialty care of children with cancer. By treating children in clinical trials, COG members have increased the cancer cure rate for children from less than 10 percent in the 1950s to nearly 80 percent at present, in COG member hospitals.

COG members include experts in pediatric hematology, oncology and surgery, orthopedic and neurosurgery, radiology, radiation oncology and pediatric tumor pathology. They are joined by pediatric oncology nurses, pediatric oncology social workers, pharmacists, child life specialists, psychologists, nutritionists, clinical research associates and laboratory scientists who are specialists in many biomedical research disciplines related to cancer.

All COG members must maintain the highest standards for treating children with cancer. They follow COG-defined protocols to prove their scientific, medical and ethical scientific expertise.

To help develop new ways to treat children's cancer, COG members submit diagnostic, treatment and follow-up data to the COG Research Data Center. Because the data from many patients are combined, clinical trials obtain results more rapidly and new treatments are developed hundreds of times faster.

Types of clinical trials

Three different phases of medical studies called clinical trials used to evaluate new treatments for childhood cancers, as well as other diseases. Each phase has a different goal.

Phase I studies are the most basic of clinical trials. Here, drugs are tested to evaluate the dosages of the treatment, and how often the treatment can be administered (maximum tolerated dosages or MTD). As it is unknown whether the treatment will be effective against a particular disease, people with a variety of diseases are enrolled. Drugs are given at gradually increasing dosages until there are unacceptable side effects (dose-limited toxicities or DLT).

Phase II studies use the results from Phase I studies regarding MTD and DLT. The treatment is targeted at the population of patients which responded most favorably in Phase I trials, because it is believed to hold promise for that particular group of patients.

Phase III studies are those that most children will receive when newly diagnosed. These studies will test the standard treatment (current best) against promising alternatives that may increase cure rates or decrease side effects or late effects of treatment.

Visit the Children's Oncology Group website