£28m being invested to transform treatment for children with cancer

Cancer Research UK and LifeArc are investing £28m in funding and resources as part of a pioneering international initiative dedicated to developing new medicines exclusively for children’s and young people’s cancers.  

The C-Further consortium is an international group bringing together researchers, clinicians, investors and other partners to overcome the challenges of delivering new cancer treatments for younger age groups. 

“We need treatments that are more targeted, with less toxicity and that are less invasive,” said Katie Thorington, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at 2 years old. As part of the Cancer Research UK for Children & Young People Insights panel, she helped shape the C-Further launch. 

Because developing new treatments for children’s and young people’s cancers can be incredibly complex, most are treated with drugs originally designed for adults. In fact, between 2007 and 2022, only two drugs developed specifically for childhood cancers were approved by the European Medicines Agency.  

Often, the difficulties of developing specialised treatments for children and young adults with cancer can stop them from even reaching clinical trials. This means there’s a pressing need to establish a better process for improving and accelerating the discovery for new cancer medicines for children and young people.   

And that’s what C-Further is aiming to tackle.  

Over the next 5 years, C-Further will focus on inviting researchers worldwide to submit their ideas for new paediatric medicines and addressing the fact that the market is not allocating the resources needed to deliver new drugs for children’s and young people’s cancers. 

This approach is designed to remove some of the biggest barriers that can halt the progress of research. Many of these are linked to the fact children’s and young people’s cancers differ significantly from adult cancers. They often originate from different cell types, grow and spread in distinct patterns, and respond differently to treatments. For example, children’s cancers can be more aggressive and fast-growing, making timely and effective treatment crucial. Childhood cancers are also quite rare, which can make it more difficult to recruit enough patients for the clinical trials needed to evaluate new treatments.

Even when adult drugs are successful in treating a child’s cancer, many patients can go on to experience long-term side effects including fertility issues, developmental problems and even secondary cancers. 

“Children’s cancers have unique biology and the reality is that it’s incredibly difficult to design drugs for cancers that affect children and young people,” said Dr Iain Foulkes, our executive director of research and innovation and chief executive of Cancer Research Horizons.  

“However, it’s not the sole factor impacting the rate at which new drugs enter the clinic. There is a market failure in paediatric oncology.”  

To start overcoming these issues, the consortium will support selected projects with funding, access to cutting-edge drug discovery facilities and expert guidance. It’s set up to provide all the resources projects need to progress from the lab bench to patients’ bedsides. C-Further will also create a sustainable model that prioritises the rapid advancement of innovative ideas into new medicines for young patients.

The new venture hopes to attract investors and partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech companies in addition to other partners, furthering collaboration between all sectors of the research industry. This will help thousands of children diagnosed with cancer each year, providing more and safer treatment options.