PHILADELPHIA — In his high-tech lab, Dr. John Maris of Moorestown leads researchers in a worldwide fight against an elusive enemy.
Maris is chief of the division of oncology and director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Research into childhood cancer has taken an unprecedented turn in recent years.
With advances in studying the human genome, researchers are finding genes that play a role in the development of cancers. They are designing therapies based on this personalized approach.
Maris called it a “completely new way to treat disease.”
The research is coming at the right time.
Childhood cancer hasn’t increased like autism, but it is on the rise.
“There is a small but statistically valid increase in childhood cancer. It has risen over the past two decades,” Maris said, noting specifically increases in leukemias and brain tumors.
Maris was one of four experts who discussed new strategies in cancer treatment at a conference for medical media held recently at CHOP’s new Colket Translational Research Building.
“The gene technology is allowing for a revolution in cancer discovery as well as cancer care,” he said. “We are well-positioned to be in the lead worldwide ... both in research and clinical care.”
Maris graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, where he is now a professor. He is an expert on neuroblastomas — cancers of the nervous system that typically appear in young children. Most are diagnosed as toddlers.
His experience early in his career in meeting with patients and their families was what led Maris to focus on childhood cancer and, specifically, neuroblastomas, because he “recognized the need for better and more efficient therapies.”
With Dr. Yael Mosse, he was on a team of CHOP researchers that found a mutation in a gene that is involved in most hereditary neuroblastomas.
Among his many leadership roles in cancer research, Maris currently leads the National Cancer Institute-funded Cancer Genome Atlas Project initiative focused on neuroblastoma.
“Dr. Maris and colleagues have gathered the largest collection of pediatric neuroblastoma cases ever assembled, allowing them to perform the studies that have led to novel discoveries of neuroblastoma genes,” the hospital said in a profile on Maris.
In 2010, the National Cancer Institute spent $249.7 million in pediatric cancer research, which represents about 5 percent of what the institute spent in total cancer funding, it reported earlier this year. The institute noted that it would have to cut funding for research projects this year because of budget constraints.
Despite these cutbacks, CHOP is holding its own, Maris said.
“We’ve weathered the storm better than some places,” he said, citing the depth and breadth of research there.
Last month, the hospital entered into a partnership with the Beijing Genome Institute, a leader in genetic research.
It also acquired a $2.4 million, Swiss-made freezer where more than 2 million biopsy specimens can be stored for genetic research by scientists here and around the world.
To call the floor below the new freezer flat is an understatement.
It’s “super flat,” said Thomas Curran, deputy scientific director of CHOP’s Research Institute, as he led a tour of the new facility.
Only 1 millimeter of deviation was allowed when the concrete slab was installed.
This preciseness will ensure that the robot that works on tracks within the huge freezer will not pick a wrong sample.
Curran — founding chairman of the department of developmental neurobiology at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. — is working at CHOP on the molecular biology of the brain’s growth in searching for cures for brain tumors.
Dr. Stephen Grupp, director of the translational research center, discussed a breakthrough his team has made in battling acute lymphocytic leukemia — the most common childhood cancer — using the person’s own T-cells, “workhorses of the immune system.”
Grupp successfully altered the T-cells to reproduce enough to fight the cancer and to remain vigilant should it return. The treatment has been tested on three adults with CLL (a type of leukemia), before trials will begin with children.
Grupp reported that “two of the three patients had a rapid and complete remission. Leukemia cells dropped to zero (undetectable at levels of 1 per million cells) within 31 days. This remission has persisted over the year since treatment.”
Dr. Frank Balis, director of clinical cancer research in the division of oncology, explained the difficulties that arise when researchers devise potent therapies that must then be adjusted for each child needing treatment. They must be toxic enough to kill the cancer but still tolerated by the child. Protecting children and their reproductive ability from the long-term effects of chemotherapy, radiation and other treatments is a high priority of clinicians who administer the treatments.
Maris said that there are potential cures for 85 percent of the children affected by cancer but that for the remaining 15 percent — the “high-risk” cases — cures have been evasive.
It is for these children that gene research holds the most promise, the researchers said.
Peg Quann: 609-871-8057; email: pquann@phillyBurbs.com; Twitter: