Emily Mould: Results from our ZERO Childhood Cancer study have been published in Nature Medicine

Since 2017, ZERO, which is led in partnership by Children’s Cancer Institute and the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, has been providing in-depth genomic analysis and comprehensive drug testing for children with high-risk cancers across Australia, with the aim of identifying new treatment options which are recommended back to the child’s treating clinician.

We have shown that this precision-guided therapy provided by ZERO leads to significantly improved outcomes for children with high-risk cancers and is superior to standard or non-precision guided therapy, both in terms of clinical response and survival.
Of the 384 children on the study, 55% of children who received their personalised treatment achieved complete or partial remission, or had their disease stabilised for at least 6 months.

In addition, children who received a ZERO-recommended treatment did significantly better than those who did not. Their 2-year progression-free survival was more than double that of children who received standard therapy (26% vs 12%), and five times higher than that of children who received an unguided treatment (a novel agent not chosen on the basis of molecular findings).

Considering these were children with highly aggressive cancers which, in many cases, had already failed to respond to standard therapy, these results are extraordinary and show that ZERO is truly life-saving for some children.

Furthermore, children who received their recommended therapy early on in their treatment journey did significantly better than those who received it after their disease had progressed, suggesting that the sooner a personalised treatment strategy can be implemented, the better the chance of preventing relapse and death.