For the past 40 years, Newcastle University has undertaken world-leading childhood cancer research.
To mark Childhood Cancer Awareness Month this September, we’re looking back at some of the biggest breakthroughs made by our researchers in the past four decades.
Newcastle University’s Cancer Research Unit first opened its doors in 1982 and had just 7 principal investigators. 11 years later, we launched a dedicated paediatric oncology unit focussing on leukaemia research. And today, we are one of the largest childhood cancer research centres in Europe, a partner of the Great North Children’s Hospital and home to over 100 scientists and clinicians working to improve options and outcomes for children with cancer.
Our specialisms in childhood cancer research include brain tumours, leukaemia and sarcomas – cancer of the bones, joints and tissues. Breakthroughs from Newcastle University have been recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and adopted by the NHS.
In the UK and Ireland, around thirty-five children are diagnosed with cancer each week. That’s around 1,800 children each year – and countless family members and friends who are impacted by every child’s diagnosis. When we began researching cancer at Newcastle, the five-year survival rate for children was around 65%. Now, thanks to researchers like ours, over 80% of all children survive their cancer for five years or more. And for some types of children’s cancer, the cure rate is much higher.
When I graduated from Newcastle Medical School in 1969, there was no real organisation of children’s cancer in the UK. 25 years later, the protocols of treatment we established at the University were being used all over the world.
Professor Sir Alan Craft, retired oncologist and former Professor in Child Health at Newcastle University
Making cancer treatments kinder
Children are much more likely than adults to survive cancer, but it remains the number one cause of death by disease for children, with around 230 children dying from cancer each year. And those that are cured often face gruelling treatment to get there and suffer from long-term health implications.
Current therapies are based on aggressive treatments with significant side effects. These impact the long-term quality of life for many surviving patients. Our research teams are working to understand how and why cancer originates, progresses and relapses, so that we can develop new, more targeted treatments with fewer side effects.
Our work focuses on developing less toxic therapies with fewer side effects, and more effective treatment options for youngsters with advanced cancers or those whose illness has returned.
Professor Steven C. Clifford FRCPCH FMedSci Director of Newcastle University Centre for Cancer and Professor of Molecular Paediatric Oncology
Reducing toxicity in babies and infants with cancer
It is difficult to treat some groups of childhood cancer patients, especially infants in their first weeks of life. It can be challenging to know how much chemotherapy to give to these children. If some patients do not receive enough chemotherapy, this reduces their chances of treatment response and survival. If some patients get too much, this can cause serious long-term health problems.
Professor Gareth Veal from Newcastle University conducts studies to find the best way to treat patients with anticancer drugs. This involves measuring and modifying drug levels in individual patients to ensure the cancer is being targeted with only as much chemotherapy as needed, reducing the toxicity in particularly vulnerable patients like babies.
The team has established a national research programme to expand this work to include a wide range of drugs for treating infants with cancer. Dosing regimens are being improved and the findings are being fed into national treatment guidelines in patient groups where drug exposure is most variable.
Personalised treatments for those most at risk
Back in 2003, we discovered a complex abnormality in the DNA of children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia that meant they were at a very high risk of relapse. Prospective clinical trials showed patients with this abnormality benefited from high-intensive chemotherapy and this breakthrough has been recognised by WHO and used to treat patients worldwide.
And just last year, Newcastle University researchers were involved in an international study that identified a genetic marker in high-risk neuroblastoma patients. It was noted that alterations in the neuroblastoma’s ALK (anaplastic lymphoma kinase) gene were associated with a significantly poorer prognosis for children with high-risk disease. Thanks to this breakthrough, these patients can now be offered alternative treatments at the time of diagnosis to improve their chances of being cured.
This research is an excellent example of personalised medicine. By treating those patients with an ALK genetic abnormality with an ALK inhibitor we are tailoring the treatment to the patients’ individual tumour type. By combining an ALK inhibitor with the other treatments we currently give for high-risk neuroblastoma we hope to be able to cure more patients with this aggressive childhood cancer.
Professor Deborah Tweddle, Newcastle University Centre for Cancer
Breakthroughs in brain tumours
Brain tumours are the most common cause of death from cancer in childhood, with around 300 children in Europe dying from brain tumours every year. We carry out biological discovery to deliver the next generation of improved brain tumour therapies focusing on medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumour of childhood.
Research by Newcastle University has revealed that experts can identify the time, nature and outcome of medulloblastoma relapse from the biology of the disease at diagnosis and the initial therapy received.
The study showed that different biological and treatment groups within the disease relapse at different times and with different patterns of spread throughout the body. This means clinicians can fine-tune treatment and increase surveillance of children most at risk to improve the child’s prognosis.
Discoveries from our brain tumour programme form the basis if the WHO classification of medulloblastoma, and are used in disease diagnosis around the world.
How you can support childhood cancer research at Newcastle
1 in 2 of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime. You can be part of the fight to change this devastating statistic. Will you donate to cancer research at Newcastle University today?
Donor support has been vital in my career journey. As populations live longer, we are more likely to experience cancer first-hand so research into detection and novel treatments is more vital than ever so we can keep improving patient outcomes.
Dr Sarra Ryan, Research Fellow at the Newcastle University Centre for Cancer