Funded by The Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigators: Dr Sam Behjati (Wellcome Sanger Institute) and Professor Kathy Pritchard-Jones (University College London)
Award: £1,430,325
Awarded December 2019
Wilms tumour is the commonest kidney cancer of childhood, mostly affecting younger children and infants. Although treatment of Wilms is often successful, children continue to die from this cancer. One of the greatest challenges in treating Wilms is to decide whom to give intense treatment to, and which children may require very little treatment other than surgery.
Dr Behjati and Professor Pritchard-Jones’ project will build a data set, a “Knowledge Bank”, that combines genetic information with clinical outcome data to find predictors of outcome in Wilms tumour. Their team will look at cancer tissue from 1,000 children with Wilms tumour and use cutting-edge methods to identify differences in the genetic sequences. They will then analyse this information to find out which genetic features might be useful to help predict the outcomes for different patients.
This knowledge bank will be a valuable resource for researchers and clinicians around the globe. The team also hope that their data will help to improve the treatment of children suffering from Wilms by tailoring treatment intensity to individual children, based on the predictors they have found.