Childhood Cancers - NCI

Treating Childhood Cancer

Children's cancers are not always treated like adult cancers. Pediatric oncology is a medical specialty focused on the care of children with cancer. It's important to know that this expertise exists and that there are effective treatments for many childhood cancers.

Treatment Considerations for Children with Cancer

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Types of Treatment

There are many types of cancer treatment. The types of treatment that a child with cancer receives will depend on the type of cancer and how advanced it is. Common treatments include: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and stem cell transplant. Learn about these and other therapies in our Types of Cancer Treatment section.

The Latest Expert-Reviewed Information

NCI’s PDQ® pediatric treatment cancer information summaries explain diagnosis, staging, and treatment options for children's cancers.

Our summary about Childhood Cancer Genomics describes the genomic alterations associated with different pediatric cancers, and their significance for therapy and prognosis.

Clinical Trials

NCI-COG Pediatric MATCH

This trial is studying treatments targeted to tumor alterations in children and adolescents with advanced cancer.

Before any new treatment can be made widely available to patients, it must be studied in clinical trials (research studies) and found to be safe and effective in treating disease. Clinical trials for children and adolescents with cancer are generally designed to compare potentially better therapy with therapy that is currently accepted as standard. Most of the progress made in identifying curative therapies for childhood cancers has been achieved through clinical trials.

Our site's Clinical Trials Information for Patients and Caregivers explains how clinical trials work. Information specialists who staff NCI’s Cancer Information Service can answer questions about the process and help identify ongoing clinical trials for children with cancer.

Treatment Side Effects

Children face unique issues during their treatment for cancer, after the completion of treatment, and as survivors of cancer. For example, they may receive more intense treatments, cancer and its treatments have different effects on growing bodies than adult bodies, and they may respond differently to drugs that control symptoms in adults. Late effects of treatment are discussed later on this page in the Survivorship section.