How do childhood cancer treatments affect the body in the long-term?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-07-23 01:00

Australia; International; NSW

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

The therapies used to treat childhood cancers can leave lasting damage, according to international and Australian researchers. The researchers say intensive therapies have drastically improved childhood cancer survival in recent times, but there is a cost - children who survive cancer in childhood are often at risk of a range of health problems later in life, including the development of new tumours. To investigate the lasting impact of cancer treatments on the body, the researchers sequenced the genomes of tumours from childhood cancer patients. They say treatment with cancer drugs, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy, was linked to a higher amount of DNA alteration. Understanding how these treatments may drive tumour evolution down the track for childhood cancer patients can help researchers find ways to prevent it, the team say.

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Journal/
conference: Nature

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of New South Wales, The Hospital for Sick Children, Canada

Funder: The KiCS programme is supported by the Garron Family Cancer Centre at The Hospital for Sick Children through funding from the SickKids Foundation. A.S. is partially supported by a Garron Family Chair in Childhood Cancer Research; funding from The Canadian Institutes of Health Research; and National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, award number 5R03CA283675. D.M. is supported by the CIBC Children’s Foundation Chair in Child Health Research. A.V. is supported by the Garron Family Cancer Centre at The Hospital for Sick Children through funding from the SickKids Foundation, St. Baldrick’s Foundation and Rally Foundation. M.D.-G.’s fellowship within the ‘Generación D’ initiative, Red.es, Ministerio para la Transformación Digital y de la Función Pública, for talent attraction (C005/24-ED CV1), is funded by the European Union NextGenerationEU funds, through PRTR. B.O. is funded by grant AGEP-704-2024-11495 from METU, Ankara, Turkey. C.M. and M.J.C. acknowledge the ZERO Childhood Cancer Program which has been funded by the Australian Federal Government Department of Health, the New South Wales State Government, the Australian Cancer Research Foundation and the Medical Research Futures Fund and Luminesce Alliance–Innovation for Children’s Health for its contribution and support. Luminesce Alliance is a not-for-profit cooperative joint venture between the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, the Children’s Medical Research Institute and the Children’s Cancer Institute.

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