What causes therapy-related malignancies in childhood cancer survivors? Dissecting the etiology of second cancers

Childhood cancer survivors often present with therapy-related malignancies as a result of exposure to chemotherapy or radiotherapy. However, the mechanistic details of how these secondary malignancies emerge are poorly understood. The scope of the EU-funded SecondCANCERinKIDS project is to investigate how mutations accumulate in hematopoietic stem cells and give rise to therapy-related myeloid malignancies (t-MNs). For this purpose, scientists will study hematopoietic cell lineages in children before and after they receive chemotherapy to determine whether the malignant clones pre-existed or were generated as a consequence of treatment. The results will show how chemotherapy affects blood composition and provide novel insights into the origin of cancer.