Recent advances in pediatric oncology

There have been remarkable improvements in our knowledge of how to treat children with cancer and also in the results of treatment. Much of this improvement has come from careful and systematic clinical therapeutic studies. We have learned much about the natural history and some about the biology of childhood cancer. For the future it would seem that major advances are going to come not from clinical therapeutic trials but from combined laboratory and clinical research approaches. Chemotherapy will be the main stay of treatment for the foreseeable future. Immunotherapy may play some role as our knowledge of that modality improves. Basically, however, we need much more understanding of the biology of childhood tumors to effect significant answers in this disease area.