The Zero Childhood Cancer Program (ZERO) is Australia’s first-ever precision medicine program for children and young people with cancer. Led by Children’s Cancer Institute and the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, it is a true multidisciplinary team effort of researchers and clinicians, and includes all nine of Australia’s children’s hospitals together with 22 national and international research partners. Providing in-depth genomic analysis for each child, ZERO aims to improve survival, reduce side effects, and advance science’s understanding of childhood cancer for the benefit of all.

Please visit ZERO homepage for more details.

ZERO’s first national precision medicine trial began in 2017 and focused on identifying new treatment options for children with high-risk cancers – those with relapsed, refractory or rare cancers facing less than 30% chance of survival. Some children are alive today who would almost certainly have died had they not taken part in this trial, while other children had precious months added to their lives.
 

Data from the first 250 children to participate in the trial were published in October 2020 in Nature Medicine, one of the world’s leading medical research journals. These data showed:

• ZERO successfully identified the molecular basis of cancer in more than 90% of cases.
• a personalised treatment recommendation was able to be made for more than 70% of children.
• 70% of children who received ZERO-recommended personalised treatment showed a complete or partial response, or had their disease stabilised. Since this study was published, ZERO has continued to grow, with more than 900 children now enrolled.

ZERO is now being progressively expanded to become available to all young Australians with cancer, regardless of their risk profile, stage or cancer type. Over the coming months, increasing numbers of patients will become eligible to join ZERO’s national clinical trial, beginning with all those diagnosed with brain cancer.

By the end of 2023, all Australians aged 0 to 18 years with cancer will be able to be enrolled in ZERO by their treating clinician at the time of their diagnosis. This means that the results from their genomic analysis will be available to help inform their care right from the beginning, potentially leading to a more specific diagnosis, prognosis and risk stratification, and in some cases, a refined treatment approach.

At the same time as ZERO is being expanded, the Program is also being enhanced through the inclusion of powerful new research technologies. This will improve its capacity to inform clinicians’ decision-making, and further improving science’s understanding of childhood cancer. Over time, this will help answer important research questions, such as what makes some children susceptible to developing cancer, which genetic changes drive childhood cancers, and how might we develop new treatments that effectively target these genetic changes.