Treatment of rare tumors

"Rare tumors" are cancers that occur so rarely in children that there are as yet no established treatment standards and usually no clinical trials for them. These include certain skin cancers, tumors of the ENT area, colon cancer and tumors of the female genitalia..

In order to bundle patient inquiries about rare tumors and to be able to refer affected families to experts, the Society for Pediatric Oncology and Hematology (GPOH) has established the so-called STEP Registry, which systematically records rare tumors. Through the INFORM diagnostic platform, there is intensive cooperation with the STEP registry for the molecular diagnosis of these rare tumors and occasionally associated familial cancers.

In close collaboration with the GPOH, our physicians and scientists at the KiTZ are looking for new ways to treat rare tumor types. They analyze the molecular structures in the patients' tumor tissue that could serve as a target for drug therapy and use this information to develop new treatment approaches. Whenever it makes molecular biological sense and suitable clinical trials are available, the children are involved there. This gives them new access to drugs that act specifically at the molecular target according to the "lock and key" principle.

 

Prof. Dr. Till Milde
Tel.: +49 6221 - 5637082 (Registration via the KiTZ Clinical Trial Unit)
E-mail: zipo.ambulanz(at)med.uni-heidelberg.de