Last year I have selected this photo of a lovely fountain capturing 3 girls under umbrellas (Drei-Mädchen-Brunnen) in Ballplatz Mainz in support of #ChildhoodCancerAwarnessMonth. This fountain was built between two Catholic girl’s schools symbolising the separate education and a happy childhood. It is charming on its own. And I’ve select it again.
Every child deserves a happy childhood. Raising awareness about childhood cancer we help to make the dreams of children with cancer come true. Dreams for a happy childhood, better treatment, better quality of life full of love ahead through better funding of childhood cancer research and access to innovative treatments.
Today marks the start of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
Three girls fountain in Mainz Germany
The cause of childhood cancers is believed to be due to faulty genes in stem cells that give rise to nerves, skin, blood and other body tissues. For some unknown reasons, the faulty genes can sit quiet and show their ‘bad’ character after birth and programme the cells into cancer cells.
So, there is no evidence that links lifestyle or environmental risk factors to the development of childhood cancer, which is opposite to many adult’s cancers.
Every 100th cancer patient is a child. Cancer is the 2nd most common cause of death among children after accidents.
Children are not little adults and so their cancer. Some childhood cancers have a good outlook and successful protocol of treatments. However, some of the cancers do not respond to the known drugs, or if respond cancer cells find the way to develop resistance and come back being more aggressive. Among theme are some forms of brain tumours, neuroblastoma and sarcomas; cancers developing in certain age groups and/or located within certain sites in the body, along with acute myeloid leukaemia (blood cancer). Children with a rare brain cancer – diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma survive less than 1 year from diagnosis. Children with soft tissue tumours have 5-year survival rates ranging from 64% (rhabdomyosarcoma) to 72%(Ewing sarcoma). Less than50% of children with the aggressive form of neuroblastoma will live beyond 5 years with current treatment strategies.
For majority of children who do survive cancer, the battle is never over. Over 60% of long‐term childhood cancer survivors have a chronic illness as a consequence of the treatment; over 25% have a severe or life-threatening illness.
The most common types of childhood cancer are:
Leukaemia and lymphoma (blood cancers)
Brain and other central nervous system tumours
Muscle cancer (rhabdomyosarcoma)
Kidney cancer (Wilms tumour)
Neuroblastoma (tumour of the non-central nervous system)
Bone cancer (osteosarcoma)
Testicular and ovarian tumours (gonadal germ cell tumours)
On November 20th, the Irish neuroblastoma researchers have met for the first time to set up a collaborative research hub. The aim is to consolidate their expertise and skills in order to crack the neuroblastoma code together.
They all have different science background spanning from molecular and cellular biologists, immunologists, tissue-engineering, bioinformatics, mathematical modelling and clinicians representing RCSI, UCD, TCD, OLCHC and NCRC. During this meeting, researchers talked about their challenges and progress finding out that we are complementing each other projects. Clinicians from different OLCHC departments exposed basic researchers to realities of the disease. None would find this information in academic papers: it is what you see in the clinic and how it works in practice.
Big thank you to Dr Cormac Owens for the invitation and linking us together and Prof Jacinta Kelly for mapping the support available from the NCRC and CMRF.
Our next meeting will be held in RCSI in January 2018.
Happy Birthday the Irish Neuroblastoma Research Consortium!
We hear great news from the US labs that a new treatment is on the way for children with cancer. Most of their research is funded by charities and success stories appear because of the people who want to make dreams come true for kids with cancer and their families. Dreams for longer and healthier life.
Interestingly, the study led by Professor Bernie Hannigan, the University of Ulster, which was published by Medical Research Charities Group, identified main gaps that keep Ireland at the bay:
Childhood cancer research areas are not prioritised, including neuroblastoma.
No Government funding support for childhood cancer research. The research has to compete on general terms with well-funded research groups/centres/clusters focused on the adult cancers (breast, prostate, etc)
No systematic involvement in research of Patients or other lay people.
No medical research charities to fill the gap in childhood cancer research funding.
Continuing the fundraising theme, I would like to introduce The Conor Foley Neuroblastoma Cancer Research Foundation. It is founded by the family aiming to raise awareness and funding for neuroblastoma – one of the most aggressive childhood cancer. This charity is being driven by parents who lost their son to neuroblastoma. They want to fill this gap as well as bring attention to the lack of funding for childhood cancer research.
Their son Conor was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at the age of four. He was a teenager when he relapsed. He had been 10 years cancer-free. After all possible treatments, neuroblastoma took over.
His mom Margaret says:
“We always dealt with Conor’s illness privately. There were no Facebook pages tracking Conor’s progress. The day we launched the website for Conor’s charity was very emotional for me. I feel like he is out there now in the big world now with his charity. He will never get to do the things that most 18-year-olds do. He won’t go inter-railing in the summer, he’ll never go bungee jumping off some bridge, but I feel that he’s part of the world, doing something good for other children and their families. We valued our time with Conor so much, we want to help researchers who will give families, even more time, more options, perhaps even a cure for their children when they get the same awful news that we did. I think he would approve of that.”
Dedicating posts to neuroblastoma and childhood cancer awareness month, it is impossible to stay distant about the need of fundraising to fund research. The #ChildhoodCancerAwareness Campaign aims not only attract our attention to the fact that kids get cancer too, but mostly to show how little is done to understand the causes of the disease and offer effective treatments.
To address the last problems more research is needed both curiosity-driven and translationally focused. To answer the question why research needs more funding, in general, you can find here.
Effective treatments cost money: only 4% of research funding goes to research in ALL childhood health conditions. In the other words, every 4cents of each 1 euro are to be used in research.
The causes of childhood cancer including neuroblastoma are not known. It would be right to expect more blind alleys and failed ideas in the understanding these cancers.
The research can take decades, so it is a long-term investment. In contrary, people, who can give money (the politicians and governments), have 4-5 years of political power. 4-5 yearsvsdecades = the discovery research becomes critically underfunded.
Walking in Mainz last week I saw a lovely fountain capturing 3 girls under umbrellas (Drei-Mädchen-Brunnen) at the ball square. This fountain was built between two Catholic girl’s schools symbolising the separate education and happy childhood. It has charmed me and reminded rainy days in Ireland and how this fountain may fit any park or square in Dublin.
My second look at the picture gave me another perspective. This sculpture could illustrate not only happy childhood but also the protection we can give to children with cancer being their umbrellas. As September is childhood cancer awareness month, I am picking this picture to support this call. Raising awareness about childhood cancer we help to make their dreams come true. Dreams for better treatment, better quality of life full of love ahead through better funding of childhood cancer research and access to innovative treatments.
The focus of the scientific program was on “Translating Science into Survival”. Talks covered the challenging areas in cancer immunology and immunotherapy. The full list of topics can be found in the meeting program.
At the moment cancer immunology and immunotherapy is a hot topic in the next generation of anti-cancer therapies. Lots of attention is given to checkpoint immunodrugs as it was proven by the prevalence of talks on this subject in the program. Indeed, this drug has great potential, but at the same time, it is not universal. About 50% of patients do not benefit from it.
What lessons have been learned from the talks:
Checkpoint immunotherapies are the main stream
Not all cancer patients would respond to immunodrug
Genetic landscape of a tumour and/or the patient may contribute to this, thus making beneficial to check genetics for this type of treatment
Immunodrugs work better in combination with conventional therapies such as chemotherapy.
The immune system can be tuned by a drug, but it will switch on compensatory mechanisms to balance the intervention.
I was giving a talk at Georg-Speyer-Haus Institute for Tumour Biology and Experimental Therapy yesterday. The aim of my visit was to establish collaboration with Prof Daniela Krause, who is the expert in bone marrow microenvironment and targeted therapies. She took me to the Institute museum that keeps the history of this place and phenomenal researchers used to work there.
This research institute was established in 1904 to support work of Paul Ehrlich, its first director and funded by the private foundation “Chemotherapeutisches Forschungsinstitut Georg-Speyer-Haus”. Paul Erlich is the Father of the chemotherapyconcept originally developed to treat diseases of bacterial origin. He reasoned that there should be a chemical compound that can specifically target bacteria and stop its growth. He developed Salvarsan, the most effective drug for treatment of syphilis until penicillin came onto the market.
Paul Erlich is also known for his contribution to cancer research. He and his colleagues actively experimented on how tumour originates and spread. They also tried to understand how immune system can beat cancer applying vaccination concepts.
The main challenge in treating high-risk neuroblastoma is to stop or control tumour spread and development of resistance to multiple chemotherapeutic drugs. Immunotherapy is one of the recent advances in our understanding how our immune system handles body invaders such as virosis, bacteria and now tumour cells. Immunotherapy holds great promise as a treatment option for neuroblastoma as well as for many adult cancers owing to the specificity of immune effector cells targeted to a tumour. Another advantage is a potential reduction in the systemic side effects observed with other forms of treatment.
Immunotherapeutic approaches for neuroblastoma include the use of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells against both L1-CAM and ganglioside 2 (GD2) cell surface antigens to promote host antitumor response. Anti-GD2 antibodies bind GD2 and cause cell death by activating both complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) and AB-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) from natural-killer cells.
Today is the final day of 
I was giving a talk at 
