science
Fatty acids play crucial role in memory formation: study
A team led by researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ) has recently shed new light on the crucial role of saturated free fatty acids (FFAs) in the brain's memory creation process.
"We've shown previously that levels of saturated fatty acids increase in the brain during neuronal communication, but we didn't know what was causing these changes," Isaac Akefe, lead author of the study and research fellow at UQ, said on Tuesday.
"Now for the first time, we've identified alterations in the brain's fatty acid landscape when the neurons encode a memory," the scholar noted.
In their latest paper published in EMBO Journal, researchers dived deep into a novel interaction between the Phospholipase A1 (PLA1) isoform DDHD2 and a key synaptic protein dubbed STXBP1 by conducting longitudinal experiments on mice.
They found that STXBP1 controls the targeting of DDHD2 to the plasma membrane and the subsequent generation of saturated FFAs.
"To determine the importance of free fatty acids in memory formation, we used mouse models where the PLA1 gene is removed," said Frederic Meunier, co-author of the study and professor at UQ.
"Even before their memories became impaired, their saturated free fatty acid levels were significantly lower than control mice. This indicates that this PLA1 enzyme, and the fatty acids it releases, play a key role in memory acquisition," he noted.
As the fattiest organ in the body, 60 percent of the human brain consists of lipids, while fatty acids serve as the building blocks of those lipids or fats and are instrumental in communication between nerve cells.
Meunier believed that manipulating this new memory acquisition pathway has "exciting potential" as a treatment for neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease.
As cancer treatment advances, patients and doctors push back against drugs' harsh side effects
For cancer patients, the harsh side effects of powerful drugs have long been the trade-off for living longer. Now, patients and doctors are questioning whether all that suffering is necessary.
They’ve ignited a movement to radically change how new cancer drugs are tested, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urging drugmakers to do a better job at finding the lowest effective dose, even if it takes more time.
Advances in treatment mean millions of people are surviving for years with incurable cancers. Jill Feldman, 54, of Deerfield, Illinois, has lived 15 years with lung cancer, thanks to that progress. Her parents both died of lung cancer months after their diagnoses.
But her cancer drug causes joint pain, fatigue and mouth sores that make eating and drinking painful.
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“If you drink something that’s too hot, you really burn your mouth. That’s how my mouth feels 24/7,” Feldman said.
She has lowered the dose with her doctor’s blessing but she wants drugmakers to study lower doses early in the research process.
“No one should have to endure avoidable harmful effects of treatment,” she said.
Unlike in other diseases, cancer drug development has focused on finding what’s called the “maximum tolerated dose.”
To speed testing of chemotherapy drugs, researchers ramp up the dosage in a few people in early studies to determine the highest possible dose patients can tolerate. That “more is better” philosophy works for chemotherapy, but not necessarily for newer cancer drugs — like the one Feldman takes — which are more targeted and work differently.
Chemotherapy is like a battering ram where aggressive strikes are a good strategy. But newer cancer drugs are more like having a front door key. They target a mutation that drives cancer cell growth, for example, or rev up the body’s immune system to join the fight.
“You might only need a low dose to turn off that cancer driver,” said Dr. Lillian Siu, who leads cancer drug development at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto. “If you can get the same bang for your buck, why go higher?”
Through a program called Project Optimus, the FDA is pushing drugmakers to include more patients in early dose-finding trials to get better data on when lower doses can work. A key motivation for the project was "the growing calls from patients and advocates that cancer drugs be more tolerable,” said FDA spokesperson Chanapa Tantibanchachai in an email.
Many of the new cancers drugs were developed using the old strategy. That leads to problems when patients skip doses or stop taking the drugs because of side effects. Some dose recommendations have been officially lowered after the drugs were approved. Other dose-lowering happens one patient at a time. Nearly half of patients in late-stage trials of 28 targeted therapy drugs needed to have their doses lowered, according to one study.
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“We were pushing the dose as high as we could go,” said Dr. Patricia LoRusso, who leads drug discovery at Yale School of Medicine. “You get side effects and then you have to stop the drug to recover from the side effects and the tumor can grow.”
There's also huge patient-to-patient variation. The amount of a pill that reaches the bloodstream can vary because of liver and kidney function and other differences. But that means lowering the dose for everyone risks underdosing some patients, LoRusso said.
“The challenge is: Where is the sweet spot?” LoRusso said.
Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, is planning a 500-patient study to test whether lower doses of two drugs for breast cancer that has spread.
The study will compare two strategies: Starting treatment at the full dose then lowering the dose for side effects versus starting with a lower dose and increasing dosage if the patient does well.
Much of the questioning of high doses has come from metastatic breast cancer patients, including the Patient Centered Dosing Initiative, which has done influential surveys of patients and cancer doctors.
“We will be on treatment for the rest of our lives,” said Lesley Kailani Glenn, 58, of Central Point, Oregon. “We want to try to live the best that we can, knowing that treatment is never-ever going to stop.”
During the 11 years she's lived with the disease, she has summited Mount Whitney in California, hiked the Cinque Terra in Italy and started a nonprofit.
When Glenn learned how cancer drug research favors high doses, she started working with her doctor. She has taken drugs at lower doses and even lower when she can’t live with the side effects. Diarrhea is her deal-breaker: She wants to be able to walk her dog or shop for groceries without worrying about a bathroom emergency.
“The last thing we want to do is have our quality of life stolen from us,” Glenn said.
Through Project Optimus, the FDA is encouraging drug developers to conduct more head-to-head dosing comparisons. That could slow down the process, said Dr. Alice Shaw, who leads early cancer drug development at Novartis.
“That will require more patients and then, as you can imagine, also will require more time to identify, enroll and treat those patients,” said Shaw said. Adding six months to a year to the process, Shaw said, needs to be balanced against the urgent need for new cancer drugs.
But getting the dose right early will in the long run lead to more effective drugs, said Dr. Timothy Yap, a drug developer at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “If the patients are not taking the drug, then it’s not going to work.”
Is the moon shrinking? Here’s what scientists say
New research suggests that the moon’s South Pole, a hotspot for future exploration, might be more challenging than expected due to “moonquakes” and landslides.
The moon's allure as a target for space agencies like NASA and private companies like SpaceX is undeniable. But a recent study funded by NASA throws a cautionary flag on the lunar South Pole, a region rich in potential water ice and the target for several upcoming missions, reports CNN.
The study revealed that the moon’s core is cooling and shrinking, causing its surface to wrinkle and crack, similar to a raisin, it said.
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These “faults” trigger moonquakes lasting for hours and landslides, potentially posing a threat to future human settlements and equipment.
The moon may seem geologically dead, but its interior is still hot, making it seismically active. The study links a powerful moonquake detected by Apollo astronauts to faults near the South Pole, highlighting the potential dangers.
While the findings won’t affect the upcoming Artemis III mission due to its short duration, they raise concerns for long-term lunar settlements. Future site selection may consider factors like proximity to tectonic features.
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Yosio Nakamura, , a professor emeritus of geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, who was among the researchers who first looked at the data collected by the Apollo seismic stations, disagreed with the study’s cause of shallow moonquakes, suggesting they originate deeper within the moon. He emphasized the need for more data.
Allen Husker, a research professor of geophysics at the California Institute of Technology, said “It is very unlikely that a large moonquake will happen while they are there. However, it is good to know that these seismic sources (causing the quakes) exist. They can be an opportunity to better study the moon as we do on the earth with earthquakes,” Husker said. “By the time there is an actual moon base, we should have a much better idea of the actual seismic hazard with upcoming missions.”
Jeffrey Andrews, an associate professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona, said, “Moonquakes are an incredible tool for doing science.” “They are like flashlights in the lunar interior that illuminate its structure for us to see. Studying moonquakes at the South Pole will tell us more about the moon’s interior structure as well as its present-day activity,” he added.
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Scientists spot previously unknown colonies of emperor penguins in Antarctica
Previously unknown colonies of emperor penguins have been spotted in new satellite imagery.
Emperor penguins, considered “near threatened” with extinction, are the world’s largest penguins. They raise their chicks in Antarctic winter on patches of frozen sea ice. But if the ice breaks up before the chicks have fledged, most will die.
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At least some emperor penguins are moving their colonies as melting ice from climate change threatens breeding grounds, according to research released on Wednesday.
One penguin colony near Halley Bay appears to have moved around 30 kilometers (19 miles) to the east, said Peter Fretwell, a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey. He said unstable conditions beginning in 2016 had made the old location perilous.
“Emperor penguins have taken it upon themselves to try to find more stable sea ice,” he said.
The four newly found colonies likely existed for many years, but scientists hadn't previously spotted them, said Fretwell. They are mostly small colonies, with less than 1,000 breeding pairs each, he said. Scientists currently know of 66 emperor penguin colonies.
The newly spotted colonies don't greatly change overall population estimates — currently less than around 300,000 breeding pairs — but they help scientists understand where penguins might be moving, said Fretwell.
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It's unclear if any of the newly identified colonies could be breakaway groups from other larger colonies, said Daniel Zitterbart, a penguin researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was not involved in the study.
But it's clear the breeding sites are in flux and a warming world means more "penguins will be on the move,” he said.
Astronauts from Turkey, Sweden and Italy launch to space station on latest chartered flight
Turkey’s first astronaut along with a Swede and Italian launched Thursday to the International Space Station on a chartered SpaceX flight.
The Falcon rocket blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in late afternoon, carrying the three men, all with military pilot experience and representing their homelands. Their escort on the trip: A retired NASA astronaut who now works for the company that arranged the private flight.
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Their capsule should reach the space station on Saturday. They will spend two weeks performing experiments, chatting up schoolchildren and soaking in the views of Earth, before returning home.
It's costing each of the three countries $55 million or more. That's the rough per-person price for the trip, the third such journey organized by the Houston company Axiom Space with NASA and SpaceX. Russia has been welcoming paid visitors to the space station for more than two decades; NASA didn't until two years ago.
Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci, a former fighter pilot and captain for Turkish Airlines, is the first person from his country to rocket to space. He noted Turkey just celebrated its 100th anniversary, and, until now, the nation's view of the sky has been limited to "that we could see with our bare eyes.”
“Now this mission is opening that curtain all the way,” he told reporters before the flight. “This is the beginning of our next centennial."
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Also flying: Sweden’s Marcus Wandt, a former fighter pilot and test pilot for Swedish Aeroplane Corp. who was chosen in 2022 as a reserve astronaut by the European Space Agency, and Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, who flew to the edge of space last summer with Virgin Galactic.
Among the symbolic items they’re taking up: a Nobel Prize medal from Sweden, fusilli pasta from Italy and tokens of Turkey’s nomadic culture.
With them is Michael Lopez-Alegria, who launched four times as a NASA astronaut before joining Axiom Space and escorting its first chartered flight. He's the only repeat passenger on a SpaceX Dragon, the capsule that's been used to ferry astronauts to the space station for NASA since 2020.
“Welcome to the Dragon frequent flyer club,” radioed SpaceX Launch Control.
A cluster of lost cities in Ecuadorian Amazon that lasted 1,000 years has been mapped
Archeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago.
A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, "I wasn't sure how it all fit together," said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding Thursday in the journal Science.
Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.
"It was a lost valley of cities," said Rostain, who directs investigations at France's National Center for Scientific Research. "It's incredible."
The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between around 500 B.C. and 300 to 600 A.D. — a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found.
Residential and ceremonial buildings erected on more than 6,000 earthen mounds were surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage canals. The largest roads were 33 feet (10 meters) wide and stretched for 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers).
While it's difficult to estimate populations, the site was home to at least 10,000 inhabitants — and perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 at its peak, said archaeologist Antoine Dorison, a study co-author at the same French institute. That's comparable to the estimated population of Roman-era London, then Britain's largest city.
"This shows a very dense occupation and an extremely complicated society," said University of Florida archeologist Michael Heckenberger, who was not involved in the study. "For the region, it's really in a class of its own in terms of how early it is."
José Iriarte, a University of Exeter archaeologist, said it would have required an elaborate system of organized labor to build the roads and thousands of earthen mounds.
"The Incas and Mayans built with stone, but people in Amazonia didn't usually have stone available to build — they built with mud. It's still an immense amount of labor," said Iriarte, who had no role in the research.
The Amazon is often thought of as a "pristine wilderness with only small groups of people. But recent discoveries have shown us how much more complex the past really is," he said.
Scientists have recently also found evidence of intricate rainforest societies that predated European contact elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Bolivia and in Brazil.
"There's always been an incredible diversity of people and settlements in the Amazon, not only one way to live," said Rostain. "We're just learning more about them."
Japan scientists create world's 1st AI-generated images using brain activity
Japanese scientists have succeeded in creating the world's first mental images of objects and landscapes from human brain activity by using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, local media reported.
The team of scientists from the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) and other organizations was able to produce rough images of a leopard, with a recognizable mouth, ears and spotted pattern, as well as objects like an airplane with red lights on its wings, Kyodo News reported Saturday.
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The technology, dubbed "brain decoding," enables the visualization of perceptual contents based on brain activity, and could be applied to the medical and welfare fields, the report said.
During research, participants were shown 1,200 images of objects and landscapes, with the relationship between their brain signals and the images analyzed and quantified using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. The same images were input into the generative AI to learn their correspondence with the brain activity.
The technology could be used in the development of communication devices and to gain an understanding of the brain mechanisms of hallucinations and dreams, according to the researchers.
QST researcher Kei Majima said humans have used microscopes and other devices to view a world that was invisible to the naked eye, but they have not been able to step inside a person's mind, noting this is the first time for humans to peer inside another person's mind.
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The findings were published recently in the online edition of the international scientific journal Neural Networks.
A six-planet solar system in perfect synchrony has been found in the Milky Way
Astronomers have discovered a rare in-sync solar system with six planets moving like a grand cosmic orchestra, untouched by outside forces since their birth billions of years ago.
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The find, announced Wednesday, can help explain how solar systems across the Milky Way galaxy came to be. This one is 100 light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
A pair of planet-hunting satellites — NASA’s Tess and the European Space Agency’s Cheops — teamed up for the observations.
None of the planets in perfect synchrony are within the star’s so-called habitable zone, which means little if any likelihood of life, at least as we know it.
“Here we have a golden target” for comparison, said Adrien Leleu of the University of Geneva, who was part of an international team that published the results in the journal Nature.
This star, known as HD 110067, may have even more planets. The six found so far are roughly two to three times the size of Earth, but with densities closer to the gas giants in our own solar system. Their orbits range from nine to 54 days, putting them closer to their star than Venus is to the sun and making them exceedingly hot.
As gas planets, they're believed to have solid cores made of rock, metal or ice, enveloped by thick layers of hydrogen, according to the scientists. More observations are needed to determine what's in their atmospheres.
This solar system is unique because all six planets move similar to a perfectly synchronized symphony, scientists said. In technical terms, it’s known as resonance that's “precise, very orderly,” said co-author Enric Palle of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands.
The innermost planet completes three orbits for every two by its closest neighbor. It's the same for the second- and third-closest planets, and the third- and fourth-closest planets.
The two outermost planets complete an orbit in 41 and 54.7 days, resulting in four orbits for every three. The innermost planet, meanwhile, completes six orbits in exactly the time the outermost completes one.
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All solar systems, including our own, are thought to have started out like this one, according to the scientists. But it's estimated only 1-in-100 systems have retained that synchrony, and ours isn't one of them. Giant planets can throw things off-kilter. So can meteor bombardments, close encounters with neighboring stars and other disturbances.
While astronomers know of 40 to 50 in-sync solar systems, none have as many planets in such perfect step or as bright a star as this one, Palle said.
The University of Bern’s Hugh Osborn, who was part of the team, was “shocked and delighted” when the orbital periods of this star system’s planets came close to what scientists predicted.
“My jaw was on the floor,” he said. “That was a really nice moment.”
North Korea will try again to launch a military spy satellite in the coming days
North Korea told Japan on Tuesday that it will make a third attempt to launch a military spy satellite in the coming days, prompting its neighbors to issue an urgent request for the North not to perform the launch in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Japan’s coast guard said North Korea notified Tokyo of its plan to launch the satellite sometime between Wednesday and Nov. 30.
The notice identified three maritime zones where debris from the rocket carrying the satellite may fall. Two are in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and China and the third in the Philippine Sea, Japanese coast guard spokesperson Kazuo Ogawa said.
Ogawa said the areas are the same as North Korea identified for its failed satellite launches in May and August, implying the third attempt would have a similar flight path. North Korea has given Japan the launch information because Japan’s coast guard coordinates and distributes maritime safety information in East Asia.
The North’s notification came a day after rival South Korea warned it to cancel its launch or face consequences. South Korea’s military suggested Seoul would suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement to reduce tensions and resume front-line aerial surveillance and live-firing drills in response to a North Korean satellite launch.
U.N. Security Council resolutions ban any satellite launches by North Korea because they are seen as a cover for testing its missile technology. North Korea says it needs a space-based surveillance system to better monitor its rivals, but South Korea says the North’s launches are also designed to enhance its long-range missile program.
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Since last year, North Korea has carried out about 100 missile tests as part of its efforts to modernize its arsenal of nuclear-capable weapons targeting the United States and its allies. Many foreign experts say the North still has the few remaining technological hurdles to possess functioning nuclear-tipped missiles.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida asked officials to coordinate with other countries to ask North Korea to cancel its launch. He said Japanese destroyers carrying Aegis-class radars and PAC-3 missile defense systems on Okinawa have been activated to stand by in case of an unexpected development.
“Even if the purpose is to launch a satellite, if ballistic missile technology is used, it is a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions, and this is a matter that greatly affects the safety of the people,” Kishida said.
During trilateral phone talks, senior officials from Japan, South Korea and the U.S. affirmed their cooperation to “strongly request North Korea to cancel” its launch plan, according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry. South Korea’s Unification Ministry said separately that it strongly urged North Korea to scrap the launch plan because it would pose a serious threat to regional peace.
After the second launch failure, North Korea had vowed a third launch would take place in October, but failed to follow through with the plan without giving any reason. South Korean officials recently said the delay happened likely because North Korea is receiving Russian technology assistance.
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North Korea and Russia are pushing to expand their relationships in the face of separate confrontations with the West — North Korea over its nuclear ambitions and Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Foreign governments and experts say North Korea is seeking Russian technologies to enhance its nuclear and other military capabilities in return for supplying conventional arms to support Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine. Such transfer would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban any weapons trading to and from North Korea.
“I will just say that our position is very clear, which is that Russia should not supply North Korea with technology that would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday. “North Korea should not supply Russia with arms that it can use to prosecute its war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Both Russia and North Korea dismissed the alleged weapon transfer deal as baseless. But when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un travelled to Russia in September, President Vladimir Putin told state media that his country would help North Korea build satellites.
In the first launch attempt, the North Korean rocket carrying the satellite plunged into the ocean soon after liftoff. North Korean authorities said the rocket lost thrust after the separation of its first and second stages. After the second launch failure, North Korea said there was an error in the emergency blasting system during the third-stage flight.
South Korea retrieved debris from the first launch and said the satellite wasn’t advanced enough to perform military reconnaissance. But some civilian experts said the North Korean satellite was still likely capable of detecting big targets like warships so it could be militarily useful for the North.
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North Korea is under rounds of punishing U.N. sanctions imposed over its past weapons tests and rocket launches. But its recent testing activities and two spy satellite launches didn’t earn the North fresh sanctions, because Russia and China blocked the U.S. and others’ attempts to toughen the sanctions.
South Korea and the U.S. have been expanding their military exercises and increasing the temporary deployments of U.S. strategic assets in South Korea in an effort to cope with North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal.
On Tuesday, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its battle group arrived at a South Korean port in a show of the allies’ firm readiness against North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats, South Korea’s navy said.
Earlier this year, the U.S. flew nuclear-capable bombers and deployed a nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea as well.
Progress in childhood cancer has stalled for Blacks and Hispanics, report says
Advances in childhood cancer are a success story in modern medicine. But in the past decade, those strides have stalled for Black and Hispanic youth, opening a gap in death rates, according to a new report published Thursday.
Childhood cancers are rare and treatments have improved drastically in recent decades, saving lives.
Death rates were about the same for Black, Hispanic and white children in 2001, and all went lower during the next decade. But over the next 10 years, only the rate for white children dipped a little lower.
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“You can have the most sophisticated scientific advances, but if we can’t deliver them into every community in the same way, then we have not met our goal as a nation,” said Dr. Sharon Castellino, a pediatric cancer specialist at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, who had no role in the new report.
She said the complexity of new cancers treatments such as gene therapy, which can cure some children with leukemia, can burden families and be an impediment to getting care.
“You need at least one parent to quit their job and be there 24/7, and then figure out the situation for the rest of their children," Castellino said. "It’s not that families don’t want to do that. It's difficult.”
More social workers are needed to help families file paperwork to get job-protected leave and make sure the child's health insurance is current and doesn't lapse.
The overall cancer death rate for children and teenagers in the U.S. declined 24% over the two decades, from 2.75 to 2.10 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
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The 2021 rate per 10,000 was 2.38 for Black youth, 2.36 for Hispanics and 1.99 for whites.
Nearly incurable 50 years ago, childhood cancer now is survivable for most patients, especially those with leukemia. The leading cause of cancer deaths in kids is now brain cancer, replacing leukemia.
Each year in the U.S. about 15,000 children and teens are diagnosed with cancer. More than 85% live for at least five years.
The improved survival stems from research collaboration among more than 200 hospitals, said Dr. Paula Aristizabal of the University of California, San Diego. At Rady Children’s Hospital, She is trying to include more Hispanic children, who are underrepresented in research.
“Equity means that we provide support that is tailored to each family,” Aristizabal said.
The National Cancer Institute is working to gather data from every childhood cancer patient with the goal of linking each child to state-of-the-art care. The effort could improve equity, said Dr. Emily Tonorezos, who leads the institute's work on cancer survivorship.
The CDC's report is “upsetting and discouraging,” she said. “It gives us a roadmap for where we need to go next.”