CHOP Researchers Get A Lead On Neuroblastoma

By Faye Flam
Inquirer Staff Writer

John Maris has spent more than 20 years trying to understand why some children get an often-fatal cancer called neuroblastoma. There was no obvious environmental factor, and a genetic variation seemed to be involved. But how to find it?

Then, he and his colleagues at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia got the chance to try something that would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier: Scan the DNA of hundreds of children stricken with the disease and compare it with DNA from thousands of healthy children in a control group.

In the last 13 months, they have gone from knowing almost nothing about why some children get neuroblastoma to identifying three genes associated with risk. And this summer the project has led them to begin the first related drug trial to help neuroblastoma patients.

"Now we're starting to get some significant traction," said Maris, who has devoted his career to studying and treating children with neuroblastoma, which causes 600 to 700 new cases each year. Among them was Alex Scott, founder of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, who died from her cancer at age 8.

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