Thanks to improved therapies, 85% of U.S. children diagnosed with cancer now survive at least five years, with more than half a million survivors in the country today. But this group faces a unique set of challenges after getting cancer treatment at a young age—including an increased risk for new cancers later in life, as well as heart, lung, brain and other complications. Survivorship care addresses these issues by screening for common health problems and treating them early, but many childhood cancer survivors never receive it. A Keck School of Medicine of USC review of more than 8,500 research publications found that barriers ranging from gaps in specialized care to emotional trauma may explain why many people with childhood cancer do not get the recommended survivorship care. For example, children with cancer are treated by pediatric oncologists in children’s hospitals. After recovery, they must seek follow-up care from a different provider—but it’s often unclear where to turn. Adding training on survivorship guidelines and care plans to medical school curricula is one key solution. In addition, specialized cancer care centers that offer survivorship care to adult patients can broaden their scope to welcome childhood cancer survivors. Survivors also miss out on care because of barriers at the personal level. Some people lack knowledge about survivorship care or hold inaccurate beliefs, including that care is not very important. Others actively avoid seeking follow-up care because of emotional trauma or distress related to getting cancer treatment at a young age. Helping survivors understand their risks and feel empowered can make them more likely to stay engaged in follow-up care, the review found. Solutions include giving patients a clear survivorship care plan and treatment summary before they leave pediatric care, along with shared decision-making tools that help patients, caregivers and providers collaboratively build the care plan. Peer mentorship programs can also support young adults as they navigate the transition from pediatric to adult care.

In a unique finding, researchers discovered that when pancreatic cancer cells send out tiny particles that are packed with certain microRNA molecules, nearby immune cells called macrophages are reprogrammed to help the tumor grow instead of engaging in their regular role of fighting the tumor. This insight from cell and mouse experiments helped the scientists outline a potential way to reverse the process and possibly improve outcomes in pancreatic cancer.

In a proof-of-concept study funded by the National Institutes of Health, researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have shown that an innovative, noninvasive technique can be used to quickly collect 3D images of the human body, from head to foot. The technology combines ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging, which detects sound waves generated by light, to simultaneously collect images of both tissue and blood vessels. For the first time in humans, the research team combined two imaging methods, rotational ultrasound tomography (RUST) and photoacoustic tomography (PAT), to create what they call RUS-PAT. To show how broadly the technology can be applied, the researchers used the system to image multiple regions of the human body: the brain, breast, hand and foot. Brain imaging was done in patients with traumatic brain injury undergoing surgery, who had portions of their skull temporarily removed. The results show that the technology can capture both tissue structure and blood vessels across a region up to 10 centimeters wide, all in about 10 seconds. The findings have the potential to address current gaps in medical imaging.