AUSTRALIAN researchers will lead a major international clinical trial for childhood cancer using a drug previously prescribed to treat African Sleeping Sickness.
SYDNEY Children’s Hospital will host the international trial, which is being run across 14 hospitals in North America.
If the trial proves successful it could fundamentally change the approach to treatment for relapsed neuroblastoma, researchers say. Neuroblastoma, a malignant (cancerous) tumour that develops from nerve tissue, accounts for 15 per cent of all paediatric cancer deaths in Australia. The trial will use a small molecule drug, called Difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), which has been used for treating African Sleeping Sickness, a parasitic disease of humans and animals that is spread by the bites of tsetse flies. “The drug DFMO essentially makes the current chemotherapies more effective in killing neuroblastoma cells,” said trial leader, Dr David Ziegler, Paediatric Oncologist at Sydney Children’s Hospital. “To initiate this trial we developed a new formulation of DFMO that can be given to children as a syrup. “We hope that this will be a new way forward for children diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma.”