Rhabdomyosarcoma: contemporary status and future directions. The Lucy Wortham James Clinical Research Award.

Approximately two thirds of children with rhabdomyosarcoma will be cured of their tumor and become long-term survivors. Multidisciplinary care has brought about improvements in survival. Yet our therapies of today are suboptimal in many situations and demand intense effort toward improving cure rates and quality of life. Rhabdomyosarcoma is a complex childhood malignancy with differing anatomic sites of presentation and varying histologic subtypes, each presenting with unique patterns of growth, making it inappropriate to consider the disease a single entity. Avenues of future research involve cytogenetic and molecular genetic investigations that will aid in diagnosis and screening and, it is hoped, guide clinicians to more specific therapy.