National cancer charities the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust and Sarcoma UK are delighted to announce a pioneering research collaboration to find more effective ways of treating childhood sarcoma cancers.
The £100,000 project aims to improve outcomes for children and young people who are diagnosed with sarcoma, a less common cancer that can affect any part of the body on the inside or outside, including the muscle, bone, tendons, blood vessels and fatty tissues.
Sarcoma is the third most common cancer in children but sadly it has lower survival rates than many other childhood cancers, and life-saving research is urgently needed.
Every day, a child or young person in the UK is diagnosed with sarcoma cancer, but as many as 40% of sarcoma patients overall do not receive an initial accurate diagnosis of their sarcoma due to a lack of awareness around the signs and symptoms.
Sadly, for many types of sarcoma cancer, no new treatments have been developed for decades. Most patients are referred for surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but without increased awareness and early diagnosis, there is a greater risk of sarcoma spreading to other parts of the body or returning after treatment.
Many lives are still being lost to sarcoma, while others are blighted by amputations or invasive treatments. Research is vital to unlocking the secrets of this less common cancer and to ensure that children are not forced to live with the potentially debilitating effects of their treatment later in life.
This exciting new research project hopes to change the landscape of how sarcoma is treated in children, focusing on a new type of cancer treatment called immunotherapy.
Unlike other cancer treatments, immunotherapy harnesses the power of the patient’s own immune system to fight and kill cancer cells. The immune system is precise, so it targets only the cancer cells, leaving the patient’s healthy cells unharmed. This also means that side effects may be less pronounced than for other types of cancer treatment.
This treatment is already used for some cancers, but sarcomas have features which stop immunotherapy from working. This groundbreaking research will aim to prevent this by switching on key cells in the immune system and studying how the childhood sarcoma cells and immune cells work together.
Clinical trials for similar types of treatment are already running for adults with sarcoma.
We are proud to have been able to work with Sarcoma UK to fund this research project. Research into childhood cancers is something that is very much overlooked so it is great to be coming together to fund this much-needed project. Childhood sarcomas have very variable outcomes in children, but by charities working together, we aim to make more significant advances. It is a pleasure to work together with Sarcoma UK and I hope that it will lead to more collaboration between our charities in the future.
Dr Jen Kelly, CEO of the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust
The Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust and Sarcoma UK are both accredited members of the AMRC (Association of Medical Research Charities).
To find out more about how we award research funding, and our membership as an accredited member of the AMRC, please see https://www.gkcct.org/research/our-research/how-we-fund-research/
To find out more about Sarcoma UK’s research funding, please visit: https://sarcoma.org.uk/our-research/how-we-fund-research/
We are delighted to be funding this important research in collaboration with the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust. Sarcoma is the third most common cancer in children, and new and better treatments are desperately needed for children with these cancers. We hope that this project will improve our understanding of immunotherapy in childhood sarcomas and bring us a step closer to the new treatments that are so desperately needed.
Dr Sorrel Bickley, Director of Research, Policy and Support at Sarcoma UK
For more information, please contact:
Dr Jen Kelly, CEO Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust, jenkelly@gkcct.org
