Childhood Leukaemia International Consortium (CLIC)

San Francisco 14th November 2007

The Childhood Leukaemia International Consortium (CLIC) is bringing together scientists who work on childhood leukaemia from all over the world to try and work out what causes childhood leukaemia.

Members of the the CLIC represent 14 studies of childhood leukaemia spread across 10 different countries - USA, Canada, Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. However, the CLIC is not intended to be limited to only current participants.

Mercifully few children are diagnosed with leukaemia each year in each country. There are rarely enough cases, therefore, to make the studies statistically significant and to come to any definite conclusions. The consortium is gathering cases from around the world to pool data to increase the certainty of any association with agents which may cause or protect against childhood leukaemia.

In addition, the CLIC aims to study gene-environment interactions in the causation of leukaemia. So far it has recruited around 9,000 cases and 14,000 controls. DNA samples are available for about half of these.

We are supporting this excellent international endeavour by providing US$20,000 to fund the first two meetings of the CLIC’s members.

The following Working Groups reported to the meeting:

• Genetic susceptibility
• Pathology (ALL and MLL)
• Infant leukemia
• Birth characteristics
• Immunity and infection
• Environmental and occupation exposures
• Family history and AML (including APL)