Although overall cure rate for cancer in the pediatric age group approaches 80%, cancer
remains the leading cause of death in children and majority of successfully treated and
cured survivors experience life-altering and life-threatening toxicities due to therapy.
Although significant improvements in survival have been observed as a result of multicenter
cooperative group studies, much work remains to be done.
At the University of Kansas Medical Center, we are active member of Children’s
Oncology Group member (COG). The COG is supported in large part by a cooperative
agreement from the National Cancer Institute and numerous federal grant funding
instruments and is comprised of over 200 institutional members representing every
recognized pediatric cancer program in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Dr. Kumar is principal investigator for COG studies at University of Kansas Medical
Center and involved in clinical research in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. Her patients
are offered disease appropriate clinical trials through COG and are enrolled on current
leading edge cancer treatment trials, identifying causes of childhood cancer and
contribute to research to improve quality of life and survivorship.
We plan to use the Hyundai Scholar Grant to enhance statewide education of patients,
families and primary healthcare providers in the region in areas of pediatric oncology and
develop an outreach initiative to the outlying communities in the state of Kansas to serve
children with childhood cancer and cancer survivors. One of our goals is to use the grant
to advance cancer survivorship research. We will create a network of pediatric and adult
specialists to uniquely care for survivors undergoing transition to adulthood to improve
physical, psychosocial and emotional outcomes of cancer survivors.
We plan to establish research protocols focusing on childhood cancer issues including
growth and fertility. Finally, we would like to establish a database to collect patient
information to enhance our research efforts to actively care for and to better understand
life-long challenges of survivors of childhood cancer.