Overview of Treatment of Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in Hong Kong

In this report, we review the landmark and achievement in treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in Hong Kong over the past 35 years. With the joint efforts from different professionals, lining up with parties in various specialties not only in Hong Kong, but also in mainland and worldwide, we are achieving our goals in enhancing the event-free survival of Hong Kong children with ALL. Through collaboration with major childhood cancer networks in joining international trials 17 years ago and in the last 10 years, we started collaboration with working group in China and conducting national multi-center studies. We worked through different treatment protocols with advancement in treatment outcome. The 5-year event-free survival of children with ALL in Hong Kong has improved from 65% to now 87%. The next step will be the advance in cancer genetics. This serves a dual purpose of better categorising of ALL subtypes with different prognostic significance and also identifying potential druggable targets for ALL with known adverse outcome. With the translocation of territory-wide paediatric oncology service to Hong Kong Children's Hospital, it opens a new page and a unified platform for basic and clinical research in children with cancers. This will bring further achievement in care of children who suffer from cancers in Hong Kong.