Advocates and scientists unite to accelerate childhood cancer research
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Parents who lost children to rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a rare and aggressive childhood cancer, joined with scientists in 2014 to form a coalition focused on finding better treatments.
They first met at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Banbury Center in Long Island, New York, a facility designed to encourage collaboration between researchers and patient advocates. Since that initial meeting, the group has expanded its focus to include other pediatric sarcomas and childhood diseases, and they reconvened at the Banbury Center in 2025.
Christopher Vakoc of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Kimberly Stegmaier of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute organised the 2025 meeting, titled Pediatric Sarcomas: Targets for Therapeutic Development. Following the meeting, attendees published a call for increased collaboration in the journal Genes & Development. They identified three priorities to accelerate progress: building an open-access platform for sharing research data, integrating pediatric and adult cancer clinical trials, and encouraging teamwork between medical chemists, scientists, clinicians, advocates, and industry partners.
The authors believe these steps are essential to turn recent research findings into effective therapies for children with sarcoma.
