Developing Therapy for Every Kid with Cancer

Session Description

Cancer is the leading disease-related cause of death in patients 1-19 years of age. However, developing drugs for children with cancer, particularly the youngest patients, is challenging due to complexities in developmental pharmacology, heightened ethical considerations, and limited patient populations. Additionally, minority patients experience significant health disparities. Hispanic and African American patients have both higher incidences and worsened outcomes with some cancers, including for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Thus, ensuring clinical development programs adequately reflect the whole patient population is increasingly complex but also increasingly important. A multidisciplinary approach is needed to address these gaps and optimize future drugs for all potential patients. Such an approach may include robust modeling and simulation, pharmacogenomics, and patient advocacy. This session will address challenges and opportunities in developing drugs that will be effective for “every kid with cancer” from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify not only challenges in the development of cancer therapies for children but also challenges that children and families of children with cancer face obtaining therapy for their disease.

2. Describe approaches to improve drug development for underrepresented children with cancer.

Session Schedule

9:30 AM - 9:36 AM ET
Introduction
Jason Moore, PharmD

9:36 AM - 9:49 AM ET
Reaching the Youngest Patients
Olivia Campagne, PharmD, PhD

9:49 AM - 10:02 AM ET
Reaching Minority Patients
Deepa Bhojwani, MD

10:02 AM - 10:15 AM ET
Reaching for the Future
Dean Crowe

10:15 AM - 10:30 AM ET
Q&A and Closing Remarks