When researching children's hospitals and oncology programs, you should have a list of questions that are relevant to the child's cancer. The same questions should be asked at each hospital so you can compare answers and make an informed decision about where to seek treatment.

Some questions include:

• What clinical trials are available?
• What type of research is going on for this type of cancer?
• What are the success rates?
• How many of these type of cancer cases do you see each year?
• Have you treated a child with this type of cancer?
• What cancers do you specialize in?
• Do you offer support groups?
• Do you allow family-centered care which allows families to be part of the treatment plan?

Pediatric cancer care is much different than cancer treatments in adults, many parents decide to go to a children's hospital like St. Jude's for care. Whatever the choice, make sure that you are getting the best possible care for the child as you can. Since you are their voice and their advocate, you have to do what you can to make sure that you are giving them the best opportunity to fight and beat childhood cancer.

Neuroblastoma is the most common tumor in infants younger than one year of age and a common solid tumor found in children. Neuroblastoma accounts for 7-10 percent of childhood cancers. It is a solid tumor that arises in a part of the nervous system outside of the brain.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital says that Neuroblastoma tumors have been successfully treated in the lab with genetically modified cells that sought out and activated a chemotherapy drug placed directly at the cancer cells.

The chemotherapy drug, called CPT-11, is already used to treat cancers, doctors and scientists already know how the drugs behaves in humans. This should make it easier to translate the lab findings to the clinic. The researchers showed that the modified cells migrated to tumors regardless of how small the tumors were or where they were located in the body.

The homing ability of these cells, called neural stem-progenitor cells (NSPCs), can be used to target solid tumors that have metastasized. The researchers based their new treatment on work previously reported that showed certain NSPCs have a natural tendency to seek out damaged or cancerous areas in the brain.

Children that undergo bone marrow transplants can develop life threatening infections while the immune system is trying to regenerating itself. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital thinks they have found a better way to harvest stem cells that are more vigorous in reproducing and rebuilding the immune system. These stem cells would reduce the time it takes for the immune system to rebuild--reducing the risk of infection.

When harvesting the donated bone marrow a specific antibody is used to find the vigorous stem cells that mature and reproduce faster. They found that using a new antibody along with the one already used might prove to have better results in capturing the best stem cells needed. This could help the donated bone marrow to take hold faster and lessen the risk of the time children are exposed to serious infections.

Although the studies so far have been done on mice, the researchers believe that this is promising information that with further studies can translate into better treatment for children that need to undergo a bone marrow transplant.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have demonstrated a new locally applied treatment for the eye cancer retinoblastoma. The new treatment, tested on mice, reduced the size of the tumor and also did not cause the side effects common with chemotherapy.

This targeted therapy uses a customized drug to disable a specific molecule inside a growing cancer cell. It is delivered locally to the site of the disease, rather than using systematic treatment. Dr. Dyer, Ph. D., associate member of the St. Jude Department of Developmental Neurobiology said "The findings suggest that this treatment not only could offer children with retinoblastoma more effective and less toxic treatment, it could also increase the chance that their vision can be preserved by eliminating the tumor and preventing its spread from the eye to the rest of the body".

Retinoblastoma occurs in about 5,000 young children worldwide each year, arising from the immature retina, which is the part of the eye responsible for detecting light and color. A report on this work appears in the November 2nd issue of the journal Nature.

St. Jude doctors were able to transfuse a father's natural immune system killer cells to save the life of his 3-month-old infant daughter who was struggling to survive acute lymphoblastic leukemia. According to St. Jude researchers, this procedure has been successful in older children, but not so much for infants. The St. Jude researchers reported that, after 16 months, the young girl is still in remission.

“This is in marked contrast to the invariably fatal outcome we see in infants with ALL who receive a hematopoietic cell transplant after they relapse following an initial treatment,” states Wing Leung, MD, PhD, Hematology-Oncology.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital pediatric treatment and research facility has a worldwide reputation of being able to treat the most challenging cancer cases. All pediatric patients accepted are treated without regard to the family's ability to pay.