Renown Children’s Hospital, the only dedicated children’s hospital in northern Nevada, has secured a grant to fund the position of Research Coordinator. This role is essential in helping young cancer patients navigate clinical trials.

The grant, announced on 19th November 2024, comes from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, the largest charity funder of childhood cancer research in the United States. The foundation awarded a total of $1.2 million in infrastructure grants to various institutions.

The Research Coordinator will play a key part in the hospital’s research and clinical trials process. This includes supporting the start-up of studies, recruiting and enrolling patients, collecting data, handling regulatory submissions, and ensuring quality and compliance.

The role also works closely with the Children's Oncology Group (COG), the world’s largest organisation focused on childhood cancer. Renown joined the COG in 2021, enabling its youngest patients to access cutting-edge cancer treatments through clinical trials. These trials explore the latest approaches to treating childhood cancer, supporting care, and survivorship.

Renown’s involvement with COG connects the hospital to over 200 institutions, including prominent hospitals such as Stanford and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This global network of more than 9,000 experts conducts nearly 100 active clinical trials at any time. Through this partnership, pediatric cancer patients at Renown can benefit from advanced treatments without the need to travel far from home.

The funding for the Research Coordinator ensures that patients and their families receive expert guidance through the complexities of clinical trials, making advanced treatments more accessible. This is particularly important as COG membership allows children in Reno to participate in promising clinical trials without leaving the region.

In the past 50 years, research from COG has greatly improved survival rates for children with cancer. What was once considered untreatable now has a combined five-year survival rate of 80%.

 

Source: renown.org

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