Five cancer projects targeting disease in children given green light
Five teams of scientists have been awarded up to £1 million each to find new way of preventing and treating cancers found in children and young people.
The funding, which is offered through the Cancer Research UK–Children with Cancer UK Innovation Awards will allow researchers to gain a better understanding of cancer in children, which they hope will lead to the development of better and less toxic treatments.
A total of £4.3 million in funding is being offered to the five teams, who among others, are focused on projects including reprogramming a patient’s immune cells so that they attack cancer and creating a cell ‘atlas’ to understand how a rare skeletal muscle cancer starts.
Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “We’ve listened to both parents and researchers and their concerns about lack of progress for children’s and young people’s cancers. That’s why we made a commitment to change this through our Cancer Research UK for Children & Young People research strategy.
“We are thrilled to be working with Children with Cancer UK in co-funding the Innovation Awards. This funding represents the dawning of a new age of investment into cancers that affect children and young people, and the awards are a key part of our research strategy.
“We hope this funding boost will build momentum in the field to improve our understanding of these types of cancer and ultimately lead to fewer children and young people losing their lives to this disease.”
Other funded teams will look at why some children and young people are at greater risk of developing cancer; why chromosome duplication happens in the cells of children with cancer; and improving outcomes for children whose blood cancer comes back.
Cancer still remains the leading cause of death by disease in children and young people aged between 1-24 in the UK. Part of this issue is that cancer in children and young people is different to cancer in adults, from the types of cancer, to the impact of treatment and long-term side effects. Researchers also still don’t know enough about why children get cancer in the first place, and the underlying biology of these cancers is extremely complex.
To help answer these questions, the five funded teams will be looking at:
- Understanding why some children inherit a greater risk of developing cancer. Professor Richard Houlston at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, will lead a team to identify previously unknown inherited gene mutations that increase a child’s chances of getting cancer. This work could determine new ways to monitor children with these mutations, allowing doctors to diagnose cancer sooner and to better tailor each child’s treatment and care.
- Understanding why chromosome duplication occurs in the cells of children with cancer, and if it can be used when designing new treatments. Professors Christine Harrison, Jonathan Higgins and Steve Clifford at Newcastle University will lead a team investigating a phenomenon where cancer cells of children and young people gain chromosomes, known as aneuploidy. This is found in many types of childhood cancers, and by understanding why this happens, they hope to find new ways to prevent and treat them.
- Developing a new way to treat a type of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) using the immune system. A form of ALL known as Mixed Lineage Leukaemia (MLL) gene rearranged infant ALL (MLLr-iALL) has poor survival. CAR T-cell therapy, which uses modified versions of a patient’s T cells to attack their cancer, is often used to treat leukaemia. But using this potentially life-saving treatment in very young patients is limited. This is because it’s very difficult to obtain T cells from them, as these patients have already gone through intensive chemotherapy and are often immunocompromised. Dr Anindita Roy at the University of Oxford, and professor Anastasios Karadimitris of Imperial College London, plan to test a new way of treating the disease by adapting this therapy to use a different type of immune cell called invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells that can be taken ‘off the shelf’. They hope this CAR-iNKT cell therapy will be a more effective way of treating these very young patients.
- Improving outcomes for children and young people whose ALL relapses after treatment. Survival for children and young people with ALL is high, but the outlook is poor if treatment doesn’t work and the cancer comes back. Professor Marc Mansour, Dr David O’Connor, Dr Jack Bartram and Professor Owen Williams of University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children are investigating the causes behind ALL coming back, which has been historically difficult because relapse is rare. By establishing a nationwide study, the team hope to develop new ways of treating relapsed patients and predicting which patients will respond to each therapy.
- Identifying new targets to treat rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a skeletal muscle cancer, by investigating its foetal origins. The biology of RMS is largely unexplored, but is thought to originate from cells in the foetus that develop incorrectly. Some of these cells persist in children with RMS when usually they wouldn’t. Dr Sam Behjati at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and Dr Karin Straathof at University College London, want to understand why this happens by building a cell ‘atlas’ – a complete guide to the cells that form RMS. They hope that understanding how RMS develops will help bring to light new targets for treatment.
Dr Nick Goulden, Trustee of Children with Cancer UK said: “Scientific research, largely funded by charities, has underpinned the massive improvement in survival for children and young people with cancer seen over the last 30 years. This exciting collaboration allows Children with Cancer UK to maximise the impact of this precious funding toward our ultimate goal of ensuring that