Paediatric neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is a tumour of the peripheral nervous system with an incidence of 1 per 100,000 children. It carries one of the highest mortality rates of all paediatric cancers. 25 new cases are diagnosed in Belgium every year. Although there have been improvements in the treatment of these patients, there is an urgent need to find a predictive test that enables doctors to give children the most suitable treatment from the onset.

The Foundation has been giving financial and operational support to the teams led by Professors Jo Vandesompele and Frank Speleman since 2008. This close collaboration has led to the identification of a component of the genetic material in the blood of children with neuroblastoma, which could now be used in a simple blood test to determine the severity of the disease and predict its course. The validation of the clinical potential of the test is ongoing within the framework of the European Liquid Hope study.

The Foundation pays tribute to the unyielding efforts of Prof. Vandesompele’s team, which has been recognised with the prestigious Antoine Faes prize for “[a] decade of research on the identification of biomarkers in children with neuroblastoma”.