Atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor

Because AT/RT is so rare, these tumors are difficult to study. As a result, Children’s Hospital Boston collaborates with other institutions in the Boston-area and around the country to improve our current understanding of this condition and offer new treatments to children with AT/RT.

Currently, researchers at Dana Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Care Center is working with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to learn more about the molecular characteristics of acute teratoid rhabdoid tumors.

In addition, researchers in the Brain Tumor Program are collaborating with physicians and researchers that treat other types of rhabdoid tumors in order to study the effectiveness of current treatments and to establish new, more standardized treatments for all types of rhabdoid tumors.
 

Clinical trials

Children’s doctors and scientists have made many breakthrough discoveries about diseases like polio and leukemia; our ongoing innovative research continues to push the boundaries of the way pediatric medicine is practiced.

It’s possible that your child will be eligible to participate in one of Children’s current clinical trials. Most children with a diagnosis of AT/RT will be treated as part of a clinical trial. These studies are useful for a multitude of reasons: Some trials are designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular drug, treatment or therapy on a specific disease; others help doctors to better understand how and why certain conditions occur. At any given time, Children’s has hundreds of clinical trials underway.

If your child’s physician recommends participation in one of Children’s clinical trials, that likely means that your child’s physician believes that the plan outlined in that trial represents the absolute best, latest care your child can possibly receive.

And participation in any clinical trial is completely voluntary: We will take care to fully explain all elements of the treatment plan prior to the start of the trial, and you may remove your child from the medical study at any time.

To search for a cancer trial at Dana Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center, go to:

http://www.dana-farber.org/Research/Clinical-Trials/Clinical-Trials-by-Diagnosis.aspx?did=21

To search the NIH’s list of clinical trials taking place around the world, go to:

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/search