Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a cancer that begins in the bone marrow in immature white blood cells called myeloblasts. Although a majority of childhood AML cases are successfully treated, there are a significant number of cases that relapse. Accurately diagnosing patients who are high-risk for relapse and treating them upfront with more targeted therapies can greatly enhance their outcomes.
Additional funding, largely through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, allowed for the expansion of the TARGET initiative to investigate additional pediatric cancers, including AML. Following the success of the TARGET ALL pilot project, the AML project team employed similar comprehensive genomic approaches to identify new therapeutic targets for pediatric HR AML. Data were generated using clinically annotated, matched tumor and normal samples obtained from patients enrolled in various Children's Oncology Group (COG) biology and clinical trials. Up to 50% of the cases studied in the TARGET AML project will include analysis of a relapse sample to produce a highly informative dataset.
Data generated for this project will be made available to the research community through the TARGET Data Matrix rapidly upon completion of validation.
The TARGET AML project team consists of multiple COG investigators at various institutions who work together with the scientists, analysts, project managers and technicians from the COG (Biorepository, Data and Statistics Core) and NCI offices (Office of Cancer Genomics, Clinical Therapy Evaluation Program, Center for Cancer Research and Center for Bioinformatics and Information Technology). This collaborative network is lead by the following: