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Research Program Overview

Wilms tumor is the most common renal cancer of childhood. Most clinical trials in childhood cancer are designed by the Children's Oncology Group (COG) and conducted at the 238 member institutions, which include cancer canters of all major universities throughout the USA and Canada as well as sites in Europe and Australia. Wilms tumor and other renal tumors are the focus of both therapeutic and biologic studies in the Children's Oncology Group.

The Children's Oncology Group has collected more than 2000 tissue, serum and urine samples in addition to the clinical information and microarray data from the most recent National Wilms Tumor Study. This represents the largest collection of pediatric cancer serum samples worldwide and represents a unique opportunity to utilize a proteomic approach to stratify this cancer by biologic risk factors and make predictions about the effectiveness of therapy.

To be able to do this research, we are creating one of the largest specimen banks of blood (serum/plasma) from healthy children and adults, as well as serial samples from children with Wilms tumor. These blood samples will be analyzed at the Indiana University School of Medicine Protein Analysis and Research Center.

A database for the specimen bank was developed by the Regenstrief Institute, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute Bioinformatics Grid (caBIG), to allow for data integration of clinical data with many different research areas. To understand these high dimensional datasets, novel algorithms and statistical methods and highly sophisticated information visualization methods are currently being developed as part of this project.