Childhood cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease among children in the United States. Every day, 36 children are diagnosed with cancer and the average age of diagnosis is 6. That’s 1 to 2 children for every 10,000 children in the United States. Cancer affects all ethnic, gender, and socio-economic groups and more than 40,000 children undergo treatment for cancer each year. The causes of childhood cancers are largely unknown, and for the most part they cannot be prevented.

In the last 40 years, the overall survival rate for children’s cancer has increased from 10% to more than 80%, but for many more rare childhood cancers, the survival rate is much less.

One out of 5 children who are diagnosed with cancer do not survive 3 out of 5 children who survive, suffer devastating late effects such as secondary cancers, muscular difficulties and infertility.

Despite these facts, childhood cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded.

In 20 years the FDA has initially approved only two drugs for any childhood cancer – 1/2 of all chemotherapies used for children’s cancers are over 25 years old Research and development for new drugs from pharmaceutical companies comprises 60% of funding for adult cancer drugs and close to zero for childhood cancers. However, the NCI spends 96% of its budget on adult cancers and only 4% of its budget on children’s cancers.