Issue date: 4/1/08 Section: Campus

"If you're in a room with 10 children with Wilms' tumor, you still don't want to think about losing one of them," she said.

Most cases of pediatric kidney cancer can be treated with surgery followed by chemotherapy, and children generally tolerate the toxic treatment well, Mullen said.

"It's true in general," she said. "Children are actually very good, probably because they have extremely healthy hearts, healthy lungs, healthy organs."

Recent research has concentrated on less invasive and less toxic treatments for children, said Lisa Orlando, communications and marketing director of the Pediatric Cancer Foundation.

The Florida-based nonprofit also recently launched The Sunshine Project, which aims to develop new treatments for Wilms' tumor and similar types of cancers after chemotherapy and radiation are no longer effective.

"What we're focusing on right now is solid tumors, because a lot of these forms of tumors have not seen new forms of treatment in 20 years," Orlando said. The project explores "areas that have been virtually untouched," as opposed to researching leukemia and lymphoma, the most common types of cancer, she said.

"I don't think that it's going to be one drug that cures all," Orlando said. "Right now it's about finding particular drugs that are effective on particular types of cancer. It's going to take a lot of doctors and it's going to take a lot of funding."

stephanie-wang@northwestern.edu

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