Pharmacotherapy update in the management of paediatric cancer

Great advances in the treatment of childhood cancer have been made over the last 30 years because of developments in supportive care, the increasing use of advanced technology to detect and diagnose disease, developments in the understanding and relevance of cell biology and by the successful recruitment of children into nationally co-coordinated clinical trials. For some childhood malignancies where the survival rate is high, trials are ongoing to see if treatment can be stratified and directed according to patient risk, with those that fall into a favourable risk category potentially being cured with less treatment and therefore less short term and long term toxicity.