Fig. 1

Main types of childhood cancers. The ideogram shows the different proportions of cancers affecting paediatric patients. Acute leukaemia is the most commonly reported cancer in children, with ALL affecting approximately 80 % of patients and AML diagnosed in 15–20 % of patients. Forms of chronic leukaemia and myelodysplastic syndromes are very rare in children and their incidence has been omitted from this graph (based on cancers statistics collected from the National Registry of Childhood Tumours, years 2009–2011, accessed through the Cancer Research UK website)