Pediatric Cancer Genetics

UCLA Pediatric Cancer Predisposition Program

Each year in the United States, about 16,000 children and adolescents under the age of 20 years are diagnosed with a form of pediatric cancer. The prevalence and contribution of heritable germline mutations leading to the development of cancer among these children and adolescents are largely unknown. Previous research studies suggest up to 30% of patients may have an underlying heritable genetic cause.

In 2012, UCLA was the first academic medical center to offer clinical exome sequencing to patients and shortly after that, we started the UCLA Pediatric Cancer Predisposition program. We are a multi-disciplinary genomics clinic with a clinical mission to apply cutting edge sequencing to the clinical care of our patients with cancer or an underlying genetic syndrome that increases their risk of cancer, and a research mission to understand how genetics affects cancer risk, effective cancer surveillance, and ultimately pediatric cancer prevention.

Conditions we treat:

• Li-Fraumeni syndrome
• Beckwith Wiedemann Syndrome or hemihypertrophy NOS
• Neurofibromatosis, Type 1
• PTEN
• PIK3CA related overgrowth syndromes
• Familial adenomatous polyposis
• Constitutional mismatch repair deficiency
• Bloom syndrome
• Lynch syndrome
• Familial paraganglioma syndrome

How to make a referral:

Referral for Genetics and Pediatric Hematology-Oncology
310-825-6708