A promising advancement for New Zealand children and adolescents with cancer

Wednesday 17 July 2024

In positive news for New Zealand children and adolescents with cancer, the ZERO2 study has opened at Starship Children’s Hospital, Auckland.

ANZCHOG is the sponsor of the ZERO2 study, which involves sophisticated genomic analysis for each enrolled child. The program is the perfect example of research translated into clinical practice – scientists look for genetic alterations that may be driving the cancer’s growth, which can then guide treatment. This information is returned to the clinicians treating the child to help inform their decision-making.  This is the first time that New Zealand children will have access to the precision medicine program.

ZERO is led in partnership by the Children’s Cancer Institute and the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick. In New Zealand it is funded by the Child Cancer Foundation New Zealand,
CureKids, Starship Foundation, Lindsay Foundation and the Wayne Francis Charitable Trust.

Just last month, a journal was published in Nature Medicine, highlighting the significant positive impact the ZERO Childhood Cancer Program has achieved for children with high-risk cancers. 384 children participated in the study, which showed that children who received a ZERO-recommended treatment had a two-year progression-free survival that was more than double that of children who received standard therapy (26 per cent vs 12 per cent). The study also highlighted that children who received their recommended therapy early in their treatment had significantly better outcomes than those who received it after their disease had progressed, indicating that the sooner a personalised treatment strategy is implemented, the greater likelihood of preventing relapse and death.