WIKIMEDIA, CHRISTARAS AThousands of childhood tumors, comprising more than 20 different cancer types, have been characterized in two large-scale analyses published yesterday (February 28) in Nature. The findings from these pan-cancer studies—the first of their kind for pediatric patients—provide new insights into the genomic changes associated with childhood cancers, and into wide-ranging differences between pediatric and adult cancers.
“Previous studies of individual paediatric cancer types have revealed that they have fewer mutations and structural variants, on average, than do adult cancers,” Pratiti Bandopadhayay and Matthew Meyerson, both cancer researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who were not involved in the studies, note in an accompanying News and Views article. “[B]ut the current pan-cancer analyses take this further, systematically highlighting several key differences between childhood and adult cancer genomes.”
In one paper, Stefan Pfister of the Hopp-Children’s Cancer Center at the NCT Heidelberg in Germany and his colleagues analyzed sequencing data for tumors from more than 900 children, adolescents, and young adults. The results, which pertain to 24 distinct types of cancer, reveal that mutation rates in childhood cancers are approximately 14 times lower ...
