We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare, and the old maxim that “slow and steady wins the race.”
Frankly, that’s one thing that can be frustrating about medical research: Most progress is exactly that – slow and steady.
Of course, we’re grateful for the incremental progress that comes over decades of work. That’s how we went from the 1950’s when almost no child survived the most common type of childhood cancer to today, when more than 90% of kids with acute lymphoblastic leukemia will be alive five years after diagnosis.
That’s huge progress… but it was a long time coming.
So, it’s all the more exciting when we have those big wins for kids with cancer. Big wins help us stay motivated to fund more research, not just “for the long haul,” but with the hope of faster progress on a grander scale.
Here are some of the big wins you’ve helped make possible by being involved with the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.
- 2013 : Survival of PH+ acute lymphoblastic leukemia increased from 20% to 70%, with the FDA’s approval of Gleevec.
- 2015 : Survival of high-risk neuroblastoma went from 30% to almost 50% with the FDA’s approval Unituxin.
- 2017 : The first gene therapy approved in the U.S. – Kymriah – is saving the lives of more than 80% of relapsed childhood leukemia patients who had no other hope.
- 2018: The most comprehensive childhood cancer bill ever taken up by Congress, the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access, Research (STAR) Act was signed into law. This was a result of the unified advocacy work of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation with many organizations and advocates.
- 2020: Another big advocacy win was the initiation of the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI), adding $50 million per year in federal funding to speed progress by connecting and sharing clinical care and research data, enabling researchers to learn faster.
- 2021 : In what has been hailed as the biggest increase in survival rates seen from a single clinical trial, the 5-year survival rate of children with high-risk group 3 medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor in children, increased from 54% to 73%. This means 20 more kids of every 100 diagnosed with this subtype will survive than before.
- 2023: Congress reauthorized the STAR Act (see above). And just as important: Advocacy efforts have resulted in the full appropriation of $30 million in federal funding each year since 2018.
- 2024: Adding blinatumomab, a targeted immunotherapy drug, to traditional chemotherapy improves disease-free survival rates for children with standard-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia from less than 88% to 96%. Because this is the most common childhood cancer, this represents many, many lives saved.
Big wins like these keep us motivated to fund more research, especially with the hope of improving the odds for kids fighting the kinds of cancer that have not seen such progress yet – like osteosarcoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, some brain tumors, and more.
Dana McCreesh, a dedicated St. Baldrick’s volunteer for more than 20 years, often quotes, “We all rest in the shade of trees we did not plant.” Her son Brent was diagnosed with neuroblastoma in 2004, and today, he is a college student, because of the slow and steady progress made by neuroblastoma researchers over decades.
But let’s be clear: While we all want that progress to be steady and ongoing, we also want more big wins in research. Faster progress. Bigger survival rates. Now, not years from now.
What kind of big wins will we see in 2025? One thing is certain: They will be made possible by research, propelled by thousands of St. Baldrick’s donors, volunteers, and others.
Let’s do this.
