A collaboration between Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Beijing Genomics Institute, or BGI that produced the Joint Genome Center at the hospital is expanding to include next generation sequencing and analysis of pediatric brain tumors.
The move is intended to support the Childhood Brain Tissue Consortium of which CHOP is a member. It also includes Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Seattle Children’s Hospital and Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The project is intended to ultimately produce more effective forms of therapy for each patient’s specific brain tumor subtype, according to a statement from CHOP.
An estimated 4,300 new cases of childhood primary malignant and non–malignant brain and central nervous system tumors are expected to be diagnosed in the United States in 2013, according to data from the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States.