St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has reaffirmed its pivotal role in the global fight against pediatric cancer with its recent redesignation as a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Childhood Cancer. This prestigious status not only honors St. Jude’s deep-rooted commitment to advancing pediatric oncology but also solidifies its unique position as the sole WHO Collaborating Centre exclusively dedicated to childhood cancer worldwide. The designation reflects the hospital’s substantial contributions in providing strategic, scientific, and technical expertise to WHO’s mission, thereby accelerating progress in improving survival rates and care quality for children afflicted by cancer internationally.

At the heart of this collaboration lies a fundamental conviction championed by St. Jude: a child’s geographic location must never dictate their likelihood of surviving cancer. Under the leadership of Dr. James R. Downing, St. Jude’s President and CEO, the institution actively partners with global health bodies, governments, academic institutions, and clinical providers to broaden access to comprehensive cancer care. These alliances are designed to fortify health infrastructures and knowledge exchange systems, ensuring equitable delivery of lifesaving therapies and supportive services for pediatric patients, irrespective of their origin.

St. Jude’s designation is not isolated but part of a sophisticated network of over 800 WHO collaborating centers distributed across more than 80 nations. Uniquely, St. Jude is dedicated exclusively to pediatric malignancies, making it an unparalleled resource in formulating childhood cancer policies and disseminating best practices. Since its inception as a WHO Collaborating Centre in 2018, St. Jude has leveraged its expertise to influence national health policies, boost technical capacity, and nurture multisectoral collaborations. These endeavors have collectively enhanced the global capacity to prevent, diagnose, and treat childhood cancers, shaping a more coordinated and effective response to pediatric oncology challenges.

The influence of St. Jude’s WHO Collaborating Centre extends significantly through the St. Jude Global Alliance, which encompasses over 400 institutions and foundations in more than 90 countries. This expansive network forms a robust implementation infrastructure that translates scientific discoveries into real-world improvements in pediatric cancer outcomes. As described by Dr. Catherine Lam, the Centre’s Director and a faculty clinician-scientist, this alliance fortifies the hospital’s academic and clinical expertise on an international scale, fostering innovation and knowledge transfer essential for tackling global disparities in pediatric oncology.

One of the landmark achievements stemming from this collaboration was the establishment of the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC) in 2018. This ambitious program targets a doubling of survival rates globally, aiming for at least 60% survival for childhood cancers by 2030. Complementing this, the 2025 launch of the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines underscores a coordinated approach to overcoming barriers in medication availability and affordability—critical hurdles in low- and middle-income countries where cure rates have historically lagged behind.

The expanded remit of the WHO Collaborating Centre now includes not only oncology but also the management of catastrophic pediatric diseases such as sickle cell disease, representing an integrated strategy that acknowledges the complex medical and supportive care needs of these patient populations. This progression enhances the Centre’s potential to impact child health comprehensively, integrating palliative care and systems strengthening into its core objectives.

Driving the Centre’s evolving agenda, Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, Executive Vice President and Chair of the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, emphasizes the aim to ameliorate survival rates in regions where it has remained below 30%. Expanding the scope of pediatric care to encompass palliative services and holistic disease management initiatives ensures that children everywhere receive not only curative treatments but also dignified, comprehensive care throughout their disease trajectory.

The WHO recognizes the critical role of collaborating centers such as St. Jude in facilitating technical support, knowledge dissemination, and health system strengthening at the country level. According to Dr. Roberta Ortiz, medical officer at WHO Headquarters and focal point for the GICC, these centers bring invaluable expertise and tools that underpin successful implementation of global childhood cancer strategies. This partnership model is instrumental in translating high-level policy into practical actions that directly benefit pediatric populations.

St. Jude’s profound impact on national cancer control planning ensures that pediatric oncology is meaningfully integrated into broader health systems and governance frameworks. By embedding child-specific needs within policy platforms, the hospital advances a child-centered approach to cancer care that elevates research-driven innovations and frontline clinical breakthroughs. This comprehensive strategy enhances survivorship and quality of life for pediatric patients on a global scale.

In addition to its leadership in pediatric oncology, St. Jude also maintains a longstanding designation as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Influenza, a role it has fulfilled since 1975. This dual recognition highlights the institution’s diverse expertise and sustained contributions to global health, reaffirming its status as a vanguard institution whose research and clinical programs catalyze transformative progress across multiple domains of pediatric medicine.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s redesignation as the exclusive WHO Collaborating Centre dedicated to childhood cancer embodies the epitome of global health collaboration. Anchored in robust scientific inquiry, innovative care models, and strategic partnerships, this status propels forward a shared vision of equitable cancer care access and improved outcomes for all children—irrespective of geography. As the global pediatric oncology landscape evolves, St. Jude’s leadership and expansive alliance ensure that the journey toward eradicating childhood cancer is both scientifically rigorous and compassionately inclusive.

Subject of Research: Pediatric cancer, childhood oncology, global health collaboration

Article Title: St. Jude Reaffirmed as WHO Collaborating Centre Driving Global Pediatric Cancer Progress

News Publication Date: June 17, 2026

Web References:

• https://www.stjude.org/research/departments/global-medicine/who-collaborating-centre-for-childhood-cancer.html
• https://www.stjude.org/global/collaborating-to-cure/global-initiative.html
• https://global.stjude.org/en-us/featured/global-platform-for-access-to-childhood-cancer-medicines.html

Image Credits: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Keywords: Pediatric cancer, Childhood cancer survival, WHO Collaborating Centre, Global pediatric oncology, St. Jude Global Alliance, Childhood cancer treatment access, Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer, Pediatric oncology research

Artificial intelligence is transforming the world, but it also comes with a growing energy problem. Modern AI systems require enormous computing power, and the powerful chips that perform these calculations generate huge amounts of heat. Keeping these chips cool has become one of the biggest challenges facing the technology industry. Researchers at the Korea Advanced […]

The post New water-cooling technology could make AI chips 10 times more energy efficient appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.

In the relentless quest to push the boundaries of semiconductor technology, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in collaboration with Applied Materials have unveiled a groundbreaking advancement that promises to reshape the future of microchip manufacturing. As the global semiconductor market races towards the trillion-dollar mark propelled by demand for faster computing, smarter artificial intelligence, and more compact electronic devices, addressing fundamental physical constraints in chip architecture has become a critical imperative. A newly developed atom-thin coating — a monolayer of crystalline tungsten disulfide (WS₂) — presents a transformative solution, elegantly overcoming a pressing bottleneck in chip miniaturization with profound implications for speed, reliability, and efficiency.

Traditional transistor miniaturization has long driven performance gains in integrated circuits. However, as transistors and their connecting copper wires shrink into the sub-10 nanometer regime, the surrounding protective layers—essential for maintaining electrical integrity—resist further reduction. These layers, typically tantalum-based barrier and liner materials, must maintain a minimum thickness of around four nanometers. In future nanoscale interconnects, these coatings may consume nearly half the cross-sectional area of the copper wiring, severely throttling electrical conductivity and device speed. The NUS and Applied Materials team’s innovation resides in synthesizing an ultrathin WS₂ film, less than a nanometer thick, that simultaneously fulfills the dual role of barrier and liner, drastically slashing thickness without compromising performance.

This pioneering coating, grown on industry-standard 200-millimeter silicon wafers using a low-temperature thermal atomic layer deposition process at 350 degrees Celsius, exemplifies a remarkable confluence of scalability and compatibility. The process avoids plasma, guaranteeing conformal deposition with precise thickness control down to a single atomic layer. Notably, this method achieves uniform coverage in high aspect ratio trenches, exceeding 95% conformity even at depth-to-width ratios of 10:1. Such attributes position this WS₂ monolayer as a viable drop-in replacement within existing semiconductor fabrication lines, bridging the formidable divide between laboratory breakthroughs and industrial applicability.

The WS₂ film’s threshold thickness of approximately 0.7 nanometers contrasts starkly with the conventional six nanometer standard, enabling a future 20-nanometer-wide copper wire to retain over 90% of its conductive cross-section. This relatively unobstructed copper path translates into reduced electrical resistance and elevated current carrying capacity, directly enhancing chip speed and energy efficiency. Extensive electrical testing demonstrated a monumental reduction in resistance—exceeding a factor of one million—compared to uncoated counterparts. The superior adhesion properties offered by the WS₂ liner promote smooth and continuous copper film formation, vital for producing reliable, defect-free interconnects at such ultrathin dimensions.

Beyond adhesion, the WS₂ monolayer serves as a robust diffusion barrier that impedes copper migration into silicon and dielectric materials under thermal and electrical stress. In accelerated aging tests, conventional barrier-free copper rapidly reacted with underlying silicon, forming deleterious intermetallic compounds and defect clusters. In stark contrast, WS₂-coated samples exhibited no such degradation, maintaining pristine interfaces even after prolonged exposure. Remarkably, devices using the atomically thin barrier exhibited projected lifetimes surpassing unprotected designs by an order of magnitude, signaling a dramatic leap in device durability.

Central to the WS₂ film’s efficacy is its polycrystalline structure composed of myriad tiny grains and grain boundaries arranged in random orientations. Unlike continuous single crystals, where aligned grain boundaries can form direct diffusion channels, the staggered grain orientation in multilayer WS₂ films creates a complex labyrinth that frustrates copper atom penetration akin to the staggered offsets in a well-built brick wall. This insight, derived from computational modeling by NUS chemists, identifies nanoscale grain architecture as a key parameter in optimizing barrier functionality, challenging the entrenched paradigm that perfect crystallinity is always advantageous.

The discovery that a single atomic layer can supplant the combined barrier and liner stack confronts long-held assumptions in semiconductor interconnect design. Prior industry standards dictated separate layers with cumulative thicknesses of several nanometers to provide necessary protection and adhesion. By collapsing these essential roles into an atomically thin WS₂ sheet, researchers open new vistas for continuing Moore’s Law scaling into unprecedented regimes. Professor Silvija Gradečak, co-director of the NUS-Applied Materials Corporate Lab, emphasizes that this fundamental shift in approach heralds a new class of interconnect architectures tailored to atomically precise materials engineering.

The process’s compatibility with low thermal budgets—vital for avoiding damage to complex multilayer device stacks—and its wafer-scale uniformity underscore its readiness for integration into contemporary manufacturing ecosystems. These breakthrough properties allow semiconductor producers to adopt WS₂-based coatings without extensive equipment overhauls or processing disruptions, facilitating rapid technology transfer. Dr. Hippolyte Astier highlights that such advancements transcend the immediate generation of chips, positioning the industry to harness this technology across multiple forthcoming innovations extending out to 2037 and beyond.

Applied Materials’ Director of Engineering, Dr. John Sudijono, notes the criticality of merging academic ingenuity with industrial constraints through the Corporate Lab framework. The collaborative environment enabled iterative validation of WS₂ films under realistic fabrication conditions, ensuring the material meets demanding reliability, scalability, and process compatibility benchmarks. This convergence of theory, experimentation, and commercialization is essential to bridging the notorious gulf between laboratory demonstrations and full-scale production deployments in semiconductor manufacturing.

Looking forward, the team is exploring refined control over WS₂ grain orientation and microscopic interface phenomena to fine-tune long-term stability and electrical behavior. Further studies aim to exploit the low-temperature vapor-phase growth technique to deposit other two-dimensional materials within diverse chip components, expanding the scope of atomic-scale coatings in integrated circuit design. This foundational research not only sets a new standard for interconnect barriers and liners but also signals the inception of a broader materials revolution in microelectronics.

The ultrathin WS₂ monolayer innovation thus represents a monumental stride towards sustaining the pace of semiconductor evolution. By ingeniously combining barrier and liner functionality into a single atomic layer with industrially scalable fabrication, this discovery resolves a pressing miniaturization bottleneck, empowering the continuation of chip performance scaling in an era where every nanoscale dimension counts. As the semiconductor industry confronts the ultimate physical limits of transistor and interconnect shrinking, atomically precise materials like WS₂ will be vital enablers of future computational breakthroughs, underpinning the technology transformations of tomorrow.

Subject of Research: Not applicable

Article Title: Low-temperature wafer-scale growth of ultrathin tungsten disulfide for bifunctional interconnect barriers and liners

News Publication Date: 31-Mar-2026

Web References: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-026-01592-6

Image Credits: College of Design and Engineering, NUS

Keywords

Semiconductors, Microelectronics, Materials engineering, Materials science