September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

join with aacr to find better ways to prevent and treat childhood cancers

These are words a parent never wants to hear: “Your child has cancer.”

While relatively rare, pediatric cancers are the leading cause of death from disease among children in the United States.

Over the past several decades, the five-year survival rate for pediatric cancer has improved, increasing from around 58-68% in the 1970s to 83-88% in recent years.

Despite those advances, approximately 1,600 children and adolescents in the United States die of cancer each year.

Among the most common types of cancers in children are acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), brain and other central nervous system (CNS) tumors, lymphoma, germ cell tumors and neoplasms, soft tissue sarcoma, and neuroblastoma.

Personal Stories of Progress in Childhood Cancer

Lianna Munir of Bellmawr, New Jersey, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of Philadelphia chromosome-like ALL when she was 6 years old. Genetic testing revealed her cancer had a PAX5-JAK2 fusion protein which is known to resist standard treatments. So Lianna’s care team recommended a form of immunotherapy called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in which a patient’s own T cells are removed, re-engineered to attack the child’s leukemia cells, and infused back into the patient. Within weeks of receiving this treatment, called tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), Lianna’s cancer began to disappear.

Ayden Newman of Munster, Indiana, was 4 when he was diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma. His treatment—which included high-dose chemotherapy, surgery, chemoimmunotherapy, two stem cell transplants, and radiation—took its toll as Ayden experienced hearing loss, nausea, fatigue, and the temporary inability to eat or walk. A major turning point came when Ayden’s oncologist recommended adding immunotherapy to his chemotherapy regimen, which almost completely eliminated the cancer. He completed treatment in early 2025 and now takes difluoromethylornithine (Iwilfin), a maintenance medication designed to reduce the risk of relapse.

Read Lianna’s and Ayden’s stories in the inaugural AACR Pediatric Cancer Progress Report, which also featured the stories of five other childhood cancer survivors.

More on childhood cancers

Chenia Lloyd-Gascho, who was profiled in the AACR Pediatric Cancer Progress Report 2025, was only 8 years old when he learned he was highly likely to get cancer at some point in his life. That is because Chenia has a rare hereditary condition known as Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which dramatically increases the risk of developing cancer over the course of a person’s lifetime. Now 19, Chenia spoke with Cancer Research Catalyst, the official blog of the AACR, about the routine monitoring that children with this syndrome undergo to catch early signs of cancer, of the psychological toll it takes on someone so young, and what it feels like when those tests do find something.
Diffuse midline glioma is an aggressive, fast-growing cancer that develops in the brain or spinal cord and has an expected survival of less than a year. This form of brain cancer mostly affects children and adolescents, with about 200 to 400 children diagnosed with this disease each year in the United States. In August 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to the targeted therapy dordaviprone (Modeyso) for adults and children ages 1 and older who have diffuse midline gliomas with an H3 K27M mutation. Learn more about the first targeted therapy approved for this cancer type in Cancer Today magazine.
Most people diagnosed with childhood or adolescent cancer will develop a significant health condition related to their diagnosis or treatment by the time they reach age 45. Read more about the long-term effects from the disease and treatments on Cancer Research Catalyst: Pediatric Cancer’s Aftershocks: The Challenges for Survivors Beyond Childhood.
As a survivor of pediatric brain cancer, Ethan Schilling understands the mental toll that cancer can take on children. That is why he became a hospital psychologist—to help children and young adults with cancer and blood disorders adjust to their new reality. Read more about his story in Cancer Today magazine: A Pediatric Cancer Survivor Helps Kids Cope.
CAR T-cell therapy has helped many children with leukemia live significantly longer, and now researchers are examining the application of CAR T cells in children with brain and CNS tumors and ways to overcome the unique challenges that come with treating the brain. Learn more in this post on Cancer Research Catalyst.
There are more than 100 subtypes of childhood sarcomas and pinning down the exact subtype can help physicians pair their patients with the right therapies. Researchers are working on AI models to improve pediatric sarcoma diagnoses. Learn more about their progress on Cancer Research Catalyst.

How AACR contributes to childhood cancer research

AACR Pediatric Cancer Progress Report

In 2025, the inaugural AACR Pediatric Cancer Progress Report was published to highlight the remarkable progress that has been made against pediatric cancers, including improving diagnosis and surveillance, enabling personalized treatments, and reducing long-term treatment-related harm. The report also underscores the gaps in our knowledge of pediatric cancers and emphasizes the urgent need for increased federal investments, international collaborations, and innovative approaches to address these challenges.

Pediatric Cancer Working Group

AACR sponsors a Pediatric Cancer Working Group. Its mission is to establish childhood cancer research as a global priority that is supported by improved funding, the latest technologies, and the best educational strategies.

AACR Conferences

Each year, AACR and its Pediatric Cancer Working Group hold a Special Conference on Pediatric Cancer that brings together leaders in pediatric oncology, cancer biology, and translational research to address critical challenges and emerging opportunities across the field. This year’s conference is September 22-25 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
At the Special Conference on Pediatric Cancer in 2025, Shawn H.R. Lee, MD, PhD, delivered the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Pediatric Cancer Research Fellowship Awardee Lecture about his research on personalized therapies for childhood patients with ALL in Southeast Asia. Learn more about his work on Cancer Research Catalyst.

Supporting Research

AACR has recently awarded research grants to investigators pursuing promising research related to pediatric cancers.

In 2026, Md Imdadul H. Khan, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, received the AACR-QuadW Foundation Sarcoma Research Fellowship in Memory of Willie Tichenor. His work is examining the therapeutic potential of a novel CBP/p300 inhibitor in fusion-positive rhabdomyosarcoma.
In 2025, Janeala Morsby, PhD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, received the AACR-QuadW Foundation Sarcoma Research Fellowship in Memory of Willie Tichenor. Her work explores the therapeutic potential of the dual inhibition of ATM and PARP in pediatric osteosarcoma.
In 2025, Siva Kumar Natarajan, PhD, of the University of Michigan, received the AACR-Sontag Foundation Brain Cancer Research Fellowship. His work is exploring how tumor-derived metabolites promote aggressive pediatric brain tumors.
In 2025, Nicole Michmerhuizen, PhD, of the University of Rochester, received the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Pediatric Cancer Research Grant. Her work is investigating NUP98-rearranged leukemia and how the principles at play in this cancer subtype may apply more broadly to other fusion-driven childhood cancers.
In 2025, Helena Yu, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, received the AACR-Swim Across America Pediatric Cancer Research Fellowship. She is exploring targeting developmental changes in protein homeostasis to improve hematopoietic stem cell transplant for pediatric cancer patients.
In 2025, Putzer J. Hung, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania received the AACR-John and Elizabeth Leonard Family Foundation Basic Cancer Research Fellowship to study how acute myeloid leukemia cells regulate ribosomal RNA synthesis, a process cancer cells lean on to sustain rapid growth.

For more information

Hematologic malignancies and tumors of the brain and central nervous system are the most common childhood cancers. But many others exist. Please see the pages on these and other childhood cancers for more specific information on these diseases and their treatment.