Gene Abnormality Found To Predict Childhood Leukemia Relapse; Data Now Available through TARGET Portal, Enabled by caBIG® Technology

Scientists have identified mutations in a gene that predict a high likelihood of relapse in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Although the researchers caution that further research is needed to determine how changes in the gene, called IKZF1 or IKAROS, lead to leukemia relapse, the findings are likely to provide the basis for future diagnostic tests to assess the risk of treatment failure. By using a molecular test to identify this genetic marker in ALL patients, physicians should be better able to assign patients to appropriate therapies.

The findings of the Children's Oncology Group (COG) study, led by scientists from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tenn., the University of New Mexico Cancer Research and Treatment Center, Albuquerque, N.M., and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, appear online today in the New England Journal of Medicine, and in print on Jan. 29, 2009. This research was done as part of the NCI Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) initiative, which seeks to utilize the study of genomics to identify therapeutic targets in order to develop more effective treatments for childhood cancers.

To view the entire news release, visit: http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/ALLTARGET .

Coinciding with the publication of these results, the TARGET data is available online in a new data portal (http://target.cancer.gov/dataportal/) enabled by caBIG^® technology. The TARGET Data Portal currently includes gene expression characterization, genomic characterization, and gene sequencing data for ALL. New data will be added to the databases on a continuing basis as they are generated by the TARGET initiative.

For more details about the NCI TARGET initiative, including FAQs, a glossary, more about ALL and more about the collaborators, please go to http://target.cancer.gov.

For more information about cancer and the National Cancer Institute, please visit the NCI Web site at http://www.cancer.gov , or call NCI's Cancer Information Services at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).