The Childhood Cancer Blog

The Childhood Cancer Blog

Welcome to The Childhood Cancer Blog
from Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation!

The National Institutes of Health define rare diseases as conditions that affect fewer than 200,000 people. But for families facing one of these diseases, like Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome (BWS), these diagnoses don’t feel rare. BWS affects approximately 1 in 10,000 kids and is linked to increased risk of certain childhood cancers, including Wilms tumor and hepatoblastoma. With proper treatment and monitoring, these cancers are treatable, which makes it critical to properly identify kids with BWS... Read More

As a young trainee, many people gave Dr. Michelle Monje, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) grantee from Stanford University the (unsolicited) advice that one cannot have a big career in medicine or science and also have children.

She ignored the advice. 

Dr. Monje (mother of four) was just awarded a research grant from ALSF. This grant is a $1 million commitment over two years to study CAR T cell immunotherapy for spinal cord diffuse midline gliomas in a Phase 1 clinical trial. Diffuse midline gliomas are inoperable, lethal, high-grade central nervous system tumors... Read More

It is estimated that 400,000 children under the age of 20 are diagnosed with cancer each year.  

However, there are most likely more cases of childhood cancer that go unreported. Not every country has a universal childhood cancer registry or a public health protocol for tracking cases. And in poorer countries, diagnosis and treatment delays not only limit the knowledge of cases, but limit long-term survival for these children.  

In high-income countries, 80% of children diagnosed with cancer are cured and in some low and middle-income countries, only 20% of children survive... Read More

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