Grant recipient

Kjeld Schmiegelow

PREDICT: Predispositions Revisited – Exploring Diagnostics, Interventions for Cure & Toxicity (childhood cancer as a Rare Disease prototype)

Grant amount: DKK 9,977,475

Kjeld Schmiegelow says: “We know of more than 6,000, most often hereditary, “rare diseases” (RD), including childhood cancer. Together, the RD affects more than 250 million people worldwide. In children, cancer is responsible for 20% of all deaths. In PREDICT, we will use cancer in children, and especially leukemia (most common childhood cancer), as a prototype for RD and provide new knowledge about what variations in human genetic material mean for the development of cancer (and other diseases) and for the course of the disease. Using modern genetic engineering, including a new method of analysis that we have developed, we will (i) identify individuals who have a congenital increased risk of developing cancer, (ii) identify whether the new method of analysis can be used in the national screening of newborns for hereditary diseases, (iii) examine thousands of cancer patients to map the effects of hereditary factors on cure rates and the incidence of side effects, and (iv) uncover how patients and healthy individuals experience the application of the new knowledge about their genes.”

Kjeld Schmiegelow is Consultant at the Juliane Marie Centre, Rigshospitalet, and professor in Pediatrics at Department of Clinical Medicine, Copenhagen University since 2005.