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Gustave Roussy
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94805 Villejuif Cedex - France
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GUSTAVE ROUSSY
1st cancer center in Europe

© 2006-2015 Gustave Roussy – All rights reserved

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PEDIAC program: a consortium of 11 research teams.

Logo PEDIAC

Recently funded by the l’INCa, the PEDIAC project brings together eleven teams of basic research scientists from major French cancer centers with expertises spanning a wide research area, including epidemiology, immunology, physiological modeling, genetic analyses and molecular biology of pediatric tumor cells. This consortium stems from a scientific program outside the usual French funding schemes and will develop a 4-year pluri-disciplinary research program taking into consideration pediatric cancer causes from the macroscopic environmental level all the way to the molecular level driving tumor cell abnormal properties on different pediatric cancer entities.

Gustave Roussy is strongly involved in the PEDIAC project with the participation of two teams:

Objective: to understand the causes and origins of different cancer subtypes at specific ages during childhood.

Cancers remain the leading cause of death by disease in children over 1 year of age. Moreover, most children cured of their cancer suffer from deleterious secondary effects related to the disease and the treatments received. Therefore, a better understanding of the preventable causes and of the mechanisms underlying pediatric cancers development are required to significantly reduce the impact of cancer of children.

Epidemiological and genetic studies already indicate that these specificities may result from environmental exposure to risk factors or from genetic predisposition. Also, recent experimental evidences indicate that specific pre or post-natal periods, as well as certain type of cells, are particularly sensitive to the oncogenic properties of the genetic alterations found in pediatric cancer. The precise knowledge of molecular bases underlying this peculiar sensitivity is generally lacking and need to be established in appropriate models accounting for the importance of the communication between abnormal cells and the surrounding cells.

The PEDIAC project is divided into three main aims:

  • Identify additional risk factors through in-depth analysis of epidemiological data and genetic analyses of immune regulatory processes.
  • Understand how the changes in the properties of cells during pre and post-natal period impact their sensitivity to genetic alteration frequently found in pediatric cancers.
  • Develop novel and better models to study how pediatric cancer cells interact within their local cellular environment.

Through these studies, we aim at identifying potentially preventable risk factors and novel markers of genetic predisposition to cancer. The comparison of tumors from patients with models reproducing more closely the situation found in patients will allow the identification of active molecular mechanisms specific to pediatric tumor cells.

In general, an improved knowledge of these factors will provide tools to better prevent cancer development or help diagnosis and develop future more efficient and less toxic therapeutic opportunities.

► See the dedicated website PEDIAC project