IT’S A STORY that unfolds all too frequently at Nationwide Children’s Hospital: Parents, worried about their baby’s fever and severe abdominal pain, visit the emergency room – then learn that their precious child has neuroblastoma, a debilitating pediatric cancer that most often develops in infants’ adrenal glands.
As little as two years ago, all children with neuroblastoma received the exact same treatment: chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, surgery and radiation. But today, in this post-genome, 2.0 technology-rich era, no one should receive a ‘one size fits all’ cancer treatment, but one tailored to the individual, based on the tumor’s genetic profile.
This approach, one component of “personalized medicine,” is still in its early stages. The goal of personalized medicine is to deliver the right dose of the right therapy to each patient. However, effective, targeted, and less toxic therapies require quick access to genetic information about the patient’s tumor and the specific cancer type.
The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Ohio Supercomputer Center are leading a nationwide effort to make this information more accessible, with the assistance of federal funding secured by Congresswoman Deborah Pryce and Congressman Ralph Regula and awarded by the Ohio Board of Regents. The project, called Virtual Microscopy to Microarray, or VM2M, is bridging the worlds of pathology, genetics and medical treatment
Faster, Better Expert Analysis
In much the same way that MRI and CT scans transformed non-invasive disease diagnosis in the 1970s, Virtual Microscopy – digitally formatted, diagnostic-quality scans of diseased tissue samples on traditional microscope slides – is poised to revolutionize pathology’s standard review process of tumors.
Whether VM is used for research, as it is now, or for patient analysis once it receives FDA approval, pathologists must be able to easily access and review these slides. The Center for Childhood Cancer at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital developed custom computer software that enables pathologists to securely review digital slides over the Internet, allowing multiple experts across the nation to simultaneously review cancerous tissue samples.
