Background

The Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) is a database of daily billing records from various units from 46 free-standing pediatric hospitals in the US. Utilizing PHIS, I will use methods similar to those already developed by the Aplenc lab to expand existing cohorts of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) to allow for important clinical questions in pediatric leukemia to be definitively addressed.

Background

Background

Background

I will work to determine the effect that the administration of prophylactic antibiotics to Trisomy 21 patients receiving induction chemotherapy has on their mortality, since it is known that patients with Down Syndrome are at a higher risk for both Leukemia and more severe outcomes (such as infections) of Leukemia.

Background

Neuroblastoma is a pediatric cancer that typically arises in very young children. Approximately half of neuroblastoma patients present with a clinically aggressive form of the disease; this accounts for only 4% of pediatric cancer diagnoses, yet is responsible for 12% of pediatric cancer deaths. New treatments are needed to help these high-risk neuroblastoma patients. About half of these children with high-risk neuroblastoma have a genomic alteration that results in multiple copies (>10) of the gene MYCN.