Better chances for kids diagnosed with leukaemia

A medical trial conducted in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands has doubled the survival rate for children with an aggressive form of blood cancer, researchers say.

Ten years ago, just over a third of children with high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) recovered from the illness.

But research from the Australian-led trial detailed in the journal Leukaemia on Tuesday has boosted the survival rate for those children to 75 per cent, in what is being described as a major step towards personalised cancer care.

Overall survival rates for ALL patients have lifted to 83 per cent.

The decade-long clinical trial was initiated at the Sydney Children's Hospital Randwick and The Children's Hospital at Westmead and conducted across Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

Scientists at the Children's Cancer Institute Australia developed a way to test for the slightest trace of diseased cells in the bone marrow of children with ALL - including among patients who appeared to be responding well to treatment - to identify those with the highest risk of relapse.

Children with high-risk ALL were then treated with an intensive chemotherapy protocol.

Glenn Marshall, director of the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children's Hospital Randwick, said the research would save dozens of young lives in Australia alone.

"In Australia each year over 600 kids are diagnosed with cancer or leukaemia and around 150 of those kids won't make it, sadly," he told reporters at the hospital on Tuesday.

"The commonest cancer we see is acute lymphoblastic leukaemia."

Professor Marshall said the new genetic test for minimal residual disease could identify a "barcode" for individual children's cancers.

"Using this test we could tease out the small population of children at the highest risk of relapse and in fact predict their chance of relapse a long way before it occurred clinically," he said.

The study results could help doctors in future clinical trials monitor the response of patients to different treatments, he said.