Neuroblastoma is a rare form of cancer that is extremely difficult to treat because every child’s neuroblastoma responds differently to different types of treatments. Because of this, we believe that finding research facilities that have a personalized approach to treatment with the least toxic medications is the best way to treat this disease. Less toxic treatments mean less harmful and permanent side effects.

A child with relapsed neuroblastoma has a survival rate of 5% or less. This number needs to change, and it will. The answer to the cure is hidden within each of these kids. Without them, there is no research, no cure, and no end to the despair this disease leaves behind. WE owe it to them to not give up when they are willing to keep fighting. And when we do find the cure, we will have them to thank.

Please join us in supporting this research so that one day children will live free of this horrible disease and we will no longer live in fear of losing our children to it.

Every 16 hours a child with neuroblastoma dies.

Neuroblastoma is a childhood cancer of the sympathetic nervous system, affecting approximately 650 children in the U.S. every year. It is the second most common solid tumor in infants. Most children are diagnosed by 2.5 years of age. Up to sixty percent of them have high risk disease that has metastasized by the time they are diagnosed.

Cancer kills more children than any other disease, more than Asthma, Cystic Fibrosis, Diabetes and Pediatric AIDS combined.

There is urgency in confronting the number one cause of death due to
disease in children.

Everything that we know about saving the lives of children diagnosed with
cancer has resulted from research. Forty years ago, cure rates for children
with cancer were lower than 10%. Thanks to funded research 78% of childhood
cancer patients overall are now able to be cured, with the exception of
neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma remains a fatal diagnosis.
Each year, more than 12,500 children and adolescents are diagnosed with
childhood cancer. At a time when breakthroughs can be made in treating all
childhood cancers and the quality of life for children with cancer improved,
the cutbacks in government funding will endanger the development of new
clinical trials and threaten progress in curing childhood cancer.

Survival is dependent on age and disease stage: children diagnosed before the age of 18 months have a higher survival rate, but high risk children diagnosed before age 5 have about a 30 percent chance of survival. The majority of children will relapse with neuroblastoma and their odds for survival drop to 5%. For children over age 5 the prognosis is often fatal.

The cause of neuroblastoma is unknown, though most physicians believe that it is an accidental cell growth that occurs during normal development of the adrenal glands.

Funding for children's cancer research is limited. The vast majority of federal funding and private donations for cancer research are directed toward adult cancers. Unfortunately cancer funding tends to be distributed based on the number of people who have the cancer rather than the years of potential life lost. For this reason, prostate cancer which does not substantially shorten the lives of the majority of patients who have it, receives far more funding than all childhood cancers combined. Similarly, the pharmaceutical industry is generally not interested in pediatric cancers because of the small market size unless the treatment also happens to be effective in adult cancers.

The National Cancer Institute's (NCI) federal budget was $4.6 billion. Of that, breast cancer received 12%, prostate cancer received 7%, and all 12 major groups of pediatric cancers combined received less than 3%.