Global Pediatric Oncology 2026: Advancing Equity, Innovation, and Survivorship Across High-and Low-Resource Settings

International Childhood Cancer Day (ICCD) 2026 takes place under the triennial campaign theme "United by Unique" (2025–2027), a global call to action that places the individual child and adolescent patient at the heart of oncology care. The theme recognizes pediatric cancer as a holistic, long-term experience that profoundly affects not only the patient but also family, caregivers, and communities — encompassing biomedical, psychological, social, and economic dimensions.Childhood and adolescent cancers present biological, pharmacological, and ethical challenges that are fundamentally distinct from those of adult oncology. Despite remarkable progress significant unmet needs persist: cure rates remain low for high-risk and relapsed/refractory tumors; late effects of therapy impose a lifelong burden on survivors; and access to cutting-edge treatments remains profoundly inequitable across geographies and income groups.The global dimension of pediatric oncology is one of its most urgent fault lines. Approximately 90% of children with cancer live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where survival rates remain far below those in high-income settings due to diagnostic delays, treatment abandonment, drug unavailability, and limited infrastructure. The 2026 ICCD landscape is further shaped by rapid advances in precision medicine, cellular and immune therapies, multi-omic tumor profiling, and AI-assisted clinical decision-making — innovations that risk deepening global disparities unless deliberately designed for equitable deployment.This Research Topic invites original contributions from the global pediatric oncology community to map both the scientific frontiers and the systemic fault lines of the field, with the aim of producing a landmark thematic collection in the Pediatric Oncology section of Frontiers in Oncology to mark ICCD 2026.Aims• Critically examine global inequities in access to pediatric cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship care, with particular attention to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).• Provide a multidisciplinary, patient-centered synthesis of clinically and scientifically significant advances in pediatric oncology as of 2026, with emphasis on translational impact, global applicability, and clinical readiness.• Explore how precision medicine, biomarker-driven approaches, and next-generation therapies — including engineered cell therapies and immunotherapy — can be developed and deployed equitably across diverse resource settings.• Promote the integration of early palliative care, patient-reported and caregiver-reported outcomes, and caregiver support into pediatric oncology pathways as global quality-of-life and outcomes-improvement strategies.• Advance the science of biomarker-driven risk stratification, MRD monitoring, and standardization of diagnostic assays across international pediatric oncology consortia.• Explore the role of AI, digital health, federated learning, and computational pathology in improving diagnostic precision, treatment personalization, and equitable care delivery in resource-limited settings.• Highlight late-effects science and survivorship research, including de-escalation strategies aimed at reducing long-term treatment-related morbidity without compromising cure rates — across all geographies.Thematic Areas1. Global Equity, Survivorship, and Patient-Centered Care• Access barriers to essential and innovative pediatric cancer treatments in LMICs: policy, pricing, and capacity-building perspectives• Treatment abandonment, diagnostic delay, and late presentation in low-resource settings: causes, consequences, and interventions• Late-effects science and survivorship: evidence-based frameworks for long-term follow-up of childhood cancer survivors across different resource contexts• De-escalation strategies: reducing treatment intensity without compromising survival outcomes• Patient-reported and caregiver-reported outcomes, psychosocial support, and caregiver burden in pediatric oncology• Early and integrated palliative care in global pediatric oncology practice• Tele-oncology and digital health solutions for equitable access in low-resource settings2. Precision Medicine in a Global Context• Access to precision therapies in LMICs: barriers, enablers, and models for equitable implementation• Biomarker-driven pediatric trial designs with global inclusion: challenges and opportunities for LMICs• New-generation therapies and treatment approaches with translational applicability across resource settings• Epigenetic and DNA damage response (DDR) targets with potential for low-cost therapeutic development• Global clinical trial networks: strategies for inclusive enrollment of pediatric patients across geographies• Engineered cell therapies — CAR-T, CAR-NK, and bispecific constructs — in pediatric solid and CNS tumors: global access, trial availability, and manufacturing equity• Tumor microenvironment biology and immunotherapy strategies in pediatric cancers: translational advances and global implementation considerations• Single-cell and spatial multi-omics approaches to pediatric tumor biology: from mechanistic discovery to globally applicable clinical insight3. Biomarkers and MRD: Global Standardization and Access Challenges• Liquid biopsy and MRD technologies (ctDNA, CSF-tDNA, cfRNA, methylation profiling) for risk stratification, surveillance, and adaptive therapy in pediatric cancers• Feasibility and adaptation of liquid biopsy and MRD monitoring in low-resource laboratory settings• Multi-site data harmonization and standardization of MRD assays across international pediatric oncology consortia• Theranostic profiling and companion diagnostics: global access and regulatory considerations4. AI and Digital Health for Global Pediatric Oncology• AI-assisted triage, diagnostic support, and clinical decision-making in resource-limited settings• Federated learning, synthetic data, and privacy-preserving pipelines for multi-institutional and multi-national pediatric data sharing• Fairness, bias, and equity considerations in AI models applied to pediatric oncology in global contexts• Wearable monitoring and home-sampling technologies for remote management of pediatric cancer patients in LMICs• Computational pathology and radiogenomics: feasibility and implementation in low-resource settings5. Special Populations and Delivery Innovations• Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) oncology: biology, clinical management, psychosocial specificities, and global access disparities• CNS tumor delivery innovations: focused ultrasound blood-brain barrier opening, convection-enhanced delivery, intrathecal/intraventricular administration — global applicability and access• Pharmacogenomics, maturation-aware dosing, model-informed precision dosing, and pediatric drug formulations for global use• Global registry initiatives and international data-sharing platforms in pediatric oncologyArticle Types• Original Research Articles• Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses• Narrative Reviews and Mini-Reviews• Clinical Trial Reports• Perspective and Opinion Articles• Case Reports with educational value (subject to Frontiers guidelines)Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent clinical or patient cohort, or biological validation in vitro or in vivo, which are not based on public databases) are not suitable for publication in this journal.Dr. Luca Giacomelli declares that he is the owner of Polistudium SRL - a medical research and scientific consultancy company - and that he does not have any conflict of interest directly relevant to this editorial effort. Topic editors: Luca Giacomelli, Momcilo Jankovic, Rizine Mzikamanda Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78282/global-pediatric-oncology-2026-advancing-equity-innovation-and-survivorship-across-high-and-low-resource-settings