American Association for Cancer Research honors Cancer Control and Survivorship Program

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has announced that the 13th annual AACR Team Science Award will be presented to the Cancer Control and Survivorship Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The award is granted to an outstanding group for its innovative research advancing the fundamental knowledge of cancer. The team will be recognized at the opening ceremony of the AACR annual meeting on Sunday, March 31, 2019 at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center.

The Cancer Control and Survivorship Program is a multidisciplinary research program of the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center, which strives to improve the quality of life of individuals surviving childhood cancer. Leslie L. Robison, PhD, chair of the Department of Epidemiology & Cancer Control, and Melissa Hudson, MD, director of the Division of Cancer Survivorship, lead the program.

This integrated research program conducts clinical, genetic and observational research, and translates those discoveries into effective strategies to reduce treatment-related complications, or late-effects of childhood cancer.

“Advances during the past few decades in childhood cancer treatment have led to an entirely new population that was nearly nonexistent when St. Jude opened its doors in 1962,” said James R. Downing, president and chief executive officer of St. Jude. “The work of our Cancer Survivorship division has added volumes to what is known about surviving pediatric cancer and how we can improve therapies for the next generation of patients.”

Knowledge gained from the team’s work has influenced the design of contemporary pediatric cancer treatment strategies and provided critical data to guide health surveillance and health-preserving interventions for long-term survivors.

The program maintains leadership roles in two large, National Cancer Institute-funded cohorts, St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study (St. Jude LIFE) and the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS). These studies have facilitated significant discoveries characterizing the magnitude of the childhood cancer experience, including the resulting burden of chronic disease and subsequent neoplasms and their contribution to premature mortality.

###