A multicenter team of researchers, including scientists from the University of Florida, has discovered a way to potentially block the growth of neuroblastoma, a type of cancer responsible for 15 percent of all cancer deaths in children.

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a set of previously unknown mutations in a single gene in 8 percent of neuroblastomas, tumors of the nervous system that occur in young children and account for approximately 15 percent of all childhood cancer deaths.

Expression of the CHD5 gene is frequently down-regulated in neuroblastomas, and patients whose tumors lacked CHD5 expression were more likely to have shorter event-free and overall survival compared with patients whose tumors expressed CHD5.

Drug treatment of neuroblastoma, a tumor of the nervous system in children, poses major problems. Therefore, scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have been searching for substances that are suitable as a basis for developing better drugs.

A treatment for neuroblastoma that lands a one-two punch works best when the second punch is timed to take maximum advantage of the first one, according to results of studies at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Neuroblastoma is a pediatric solid tumor that arises from cells in the peripheral nervous system.

Childhood cancers are fortunately rare, but among them, neuroblastoma is a special case, accounting for 7 percent of all childhood cancers, but 15 percent of childhood cancer deaths. It typically occurs as a solid tumor in the abdomen, but also in the neck, chest, and pelvis, developing in the network of the body's sympathetic nervous system.