Why Does Secondary Cancer Occur After Neuroblastoma Treatment?

Neuroblastoma is the most common solid childhood tumour of immature nerve cells needs intense chemotherapy with several drugs can result in severe adverse effects. one such challenging complication of childhood neuroblastoma is secondary blood cancer called leukaemia.

Scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge published a study in the journal Blood to identify which children are more likely to develop the secondary cancer to avoid risks in treatment plan and prepare for the measures.

‘Secondary blood cancer is a challenging complication of childhood neuroblastoma cancer treatment.’

The researchers sequenced the whole genomes of bone marrow and blood samples of two children who both had developed blood cancer following high-risk neuroblastoma treatment and discovered that the seeds of secondary leukaemia were sown by neuroblastoma chemotherapy right at the beginning of treatment.

Dr Sam Behjati, co-lead author and group leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "We have been able to unravel the root of secondary leukaemia in these children which seems to lie in the early stages of neuroblastoma treatment. We hope to further investigate this to try to identify children at higher risk, and to inform a more tailored treatment plan to reduce the risk of secondary leukaemia".

Neuroblastoma chemotherapy induced secondary leukaemia due to mutations in genome is identified by pre-leukaemia seeds as pre-cursors for blood cancer can be used in the future to identify the children who are at higher risk of developing secondary leukaemia and develop strategies to monitor secondary cancer for individualized treatment plans.



Source: Medindia