Children’s Eye Cancer: New Grant Focuses on Retinoblastoma

Retinoblastoma is a rare form of cancer that begins in the retina of the eye. It is the most common cancer of the eye in children. According to the National Cancer Institute, physicians diagnose about 300 children each year with retinoblastoma.

Current treatment includes chemotherapy, radiation therapy, laser, cold, or heat treatments, and surgery. Unfortunately, children with retinoblastoma must frequently have the affected eye surgically removed. For this reason, medical science continues to search for “eye-sparing therapy”—that is, treatment that eradicates the cancer while allowing a child to keep the eye and sustain normal or close-to-normal vision.

Newly funded research: "Deciphering the transcriptional regulatory network of retinoblastoma"

Under the aegis of a new grant from the Children’s Discovery Institute, Joseph C. Corbo, MD, PhD, Division of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine, will study the genetics of retinoblastoma.

Dr. Corbo and his team will test the hypothesis that retinoblastomas have genetic and molecular features of a “cone photoreceptor precursor cell”—the immature stage of cone cells in the retina that, along with rod cells, make vision possible. Based on their hypothesis, the team will also test a new, potentially eye-sparing treatment for retinoblastoma.