Aoife Regan
Director of Impact & Charitable Programmes, Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity
Childhood cancer is a rare disease yet is the leading cause of death for UK children aged one to 14.1 More research is needed to enhance survival rates, hospital experiences and quality of life for affected children.
The Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) Children’s Cancer Centre is under construction, supported by a £300 million fundraising appeal from Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity (GOSH Charity). The centre will revolutionise patient care and create an environment where cutting-edge research can thrive.
Charity drives change for children
To support the ambitions of the new centre, GOSH Charity recently launched its first paediatric cancer research strategy. This sees £15 million from our wider £70 million five-year research strategy dedicated to transforming the outcomes and experiences of children with the rarest and hardest-to-treat cancers.
A key priority of the strategy is the development of more effective and targeted treatments. As such, we recently funded two innovative treatment trials for children with relapsed leukaemia.
I am so happy to see progress
being made so that children
don’t get left out in any way.
Accelerating access to cancer treatment for children
One trial, led by Dr Sara Ghorashian, Consultant Haematologist, will adopt a novel approach which will see it run alongside an adult trial for the first time. Dedicated research projects for children’s cancers are rare, and paediatric trials that do run typically start an average of six-and-a-half years later than adult trials, resulting in delayed access.2
Dr Ghorashian says: “Too often, children wait unacceptable amounts of time to access new cancer treatment which could make all the difference. Our goal is to ensure that children are not left behind and we hope that we can prove the benefit of this novel approach to influence a change in the regulatory policy in the future.”
Mother praises cancer research
A mother whose two-year-old son Frank passed away from his leukaemia in 2019 after being treated at GOSH, has hailed the recent progress in dedicated children’s cancer research. She says: “Of course, I wish there had been a suitable treatment available for Frank at the time, but I am so happy to see progress being made so that children don’t get left out in any way and can benefit from new treatments being developed.”
We will stop at nothing to give more children the chance to lead happy, healthy lives and thrive into adulthood. Through investment in pioneering research, we aim to reach a world where no childhood is lost to cancer.
[1] Cancer Research UK. 2022. Children’s cancers mortality statistics.
[2] European Journal of Cancer. 2019. Timing of first-in-child trials of FDA-approved oncology drugs.
