Project:EveryChild (The Children’s Oncology Group)

Project leader: Peter Adamson, MD, Chair, Children’s Oncology Group, Alan R. Cohen Endowed Chair in Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Award: $100,000

The Children’s Oncology Group (COG) unites more than 9,000 experts in childhood cancer at more than 200 leading children’s hospitals, universities and cancer centers across North America and other continents in the fight against childhood cancer.

The COG’s Project:EveryChild is an initiative that will create a fundamental platform for translational research. The initiative involves taking extra tissue available from children who must undergo a diagnostic procedure and then storing samples in COG’s state-of-the-art biorepository which serves as a worldwide resource. Laboratories studying these tumor tissue samples can then link clinical data from each child, such as the treatment the child received and how effective it was, as their research moves forward. Project:EveryChild will result in a well annotated childhood cancer biobank to enable robust discovery research and a platform for personalized medicine.

The study is open to all children diagnosed with cancer. Funding from the PBTF specifically supports the acquisition of follow-up clinical information and central nervous system (CNS) tumor biospecimens. The costs of obtaining the biospecimens and corresponding clinical follow-up data obtained at diagnosis or relapse from children with brain tumors are often not covered by grants from the National Cancer Institute.