Sarcoma
What is sarcoma?
Key Statistics
1% of all cancers
Sarcoma accounts for around 1% of all cancers, but up to 20% of cancers in children and up to 10% in young adults
Affects a younger population
As sarcoma affects a younger population, it contributes a disproportionately heavy burden on the community over the term of their lives
2 in 5
Two in five patients with sarcoma will go on to die from their disease
1 in 5
One in five sarcoma survivors will go on to develop a second cancer within 10 years
Sarcoma research at Garvan
Garvan’s sarcoma research is diverse. To understand why some people get sarcomas, Professor Thomas created the International Sarcoma Kindred Study (ISKS), the largest study of inherited sarcoma risk ever undertaken globally. Early results have shown how two or more rare genetic mutations can dramatically increase a person’s cancer risk, meaning at-risk people and their families can potentially be identified earlier and receive tailored care. The second wave of this research, the Surveillance in Multi-Organ Cancer prone syndromes (SMOC+) study, is following up people identified as being at increased cancer risk and offering tailored cancer surveillance and risk management. Finally, the Molecular Screening and Therapeutics (MoST) program is a set of clinical trials tailored for people with rare and neglected cancers in general, which will benefit people with sarcomas.
Our sarcoma research