Our Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month research roundup

April is Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month.  

We highlight it because cancer, like the world it turns upside down, is a very different thing at 17 than it is at seven or 70. 

Around 2,200 teenagers and young adults are diagnosed with cancer in the UK every year. Becoming an adult is confusing and complicated enough as it is, but, for this small group, growing up also means surviving life-threatening changes scientists are still trying to understand. 

To mark the third ever Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month, we’re highlighting the ways we’ve helped push that understanding forward over the last 12 months.   

These are advances with the power to help young people with cancer live long, healthy lives past their disease. They’re the latest step in a journey that has helped prevent around 13,100 cancer deaths in teenagers and young adults in the UK since the 1970s, and they’re paving the way for breakthroughs that will save and improve lives for generations to come.

1. Working out what’s unique about teenage and young adult cancers

Teenagers and young adults can get many of the same types of cancer as children and older people, but their cancers tend to start for different reasons and respond to treatment in different ways. 

Soft tissue sarcomas, cancers that start in muscle and fat, are a good example. Although sarcomas can happen at any age, sarcoma survival isn’t improving as quickly for teenagers and young adults as it is for other age groups.  

By poring through hundreds of sarcoma samples, our researchers have helped identify some of the tiny biological changes that might explain why. 

They’ve traced specific ways that soft tissue sarcomas grow in teenagers and adults under 40. From one perspective, these are strengths that help young people’s cancers resist treatments originally developed for use in other age groups. From another, more forward-looking viewpoint, they’re weaknesses that we could target with new, age-appropriate drugs. 

What’s more, in some of the teenage and young adult samples the team investigated, these growth pathways came together into a telling pattern. When the pattern appeared, sarcomas were more likely to spread to another part of the body (metastasise).  

In the future, a test to spot this pattern of changes could help doctors identify which young sarcoma patients need more aggressive treatment, and which could be spared it to minimise the risk of side effects.  

2. Making leukaemia treatment kinder and more effective

That potential sarcoma test is an example of a risk stratification tool, a way of finding the most suitable treatment for each specific patient. 

In March 2025, we also funded a project to improve risk stratification for two types of blood cancer that affect teenagers and young adults: acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). 

ALL, in particular, is a cancer research success story. Thanks to improvements in how we treat ALL, more than 9 in 10 children diagnosed with it will be cured. However, like sarcoma, it behaves differently in different bodies. The same treatments work for less than 8 in 10 teenagers and young adults. 

And, in some cases, curing these cancers can cause life-altering side effects. 

By identifying the optimal treatment for each patient, the BIOINFORM project aims to ensure that, whenever possible, successful treatments don’t leave such long-term marks.  

BIOINFORM will draw on a unique AML and ALL resource containing 30 years of high-quality data from more than 20,000 patients. Using a range of advanced methods and technologies, including AI, researchers will analyse all that data and use it to develop tools to predict the risk that a specific cancer will return.  

The team will also apply recent discoveries about the many genetic differences between subtypes of AML and ALL to work out a set of more tailored treatment groups. 

Ultimately, our funding will help the BIOINFORM team maximise the chances that people with AML or ALL can leave their cancer behind – while minimising the chance that their future lives are shaped by any long-term side effects. 

3. Trialling a new blood test to spot if germ cell tumours are coming back 

Germ cell tumours, which start in the cells that become sperm or eggs, are some of the most common types of cancers diagnosed in teenagers and young adults. They include most testicular cancers and some ovarian cancers. 

Thanks to decades of research, more than 9 in 10 teenagers and young adults diagnosed with germ cell tumours will be treated successfully. But they need to be monitored to make sure their cancer doesn’t come back.  

Currently, that means years of regular CT scans, which can be stressful and inconvenient, and are expensive for the NHS. They’re potential lifesavers, but repeated CT scans also create a small risk of future cancers.  

That’s why we’ve just announced funding for a trial to see if doctors could use a quick and convenient blood test instead. 

Specifically, the trial will test whether a new microRNA (miRNA) blood test could replace CT scans as a way of spotting whether the most common type of testicular cancer (seminoma) and the equivalent ovarian cancer (a rarer form called dysgerminoma) might be returning after treatment. 

Over the next five years, patients on the first part of the study will have the new miRNA blood test alongside their normal, twice-yearly check-ups. That will allow the researchers to see if the blood test can pick up returning cancers as well as CT scans. 

If part one shows the blood test is effective, the researchers will begin comparing the two techniques directly. Most people in this second phase of the trial will have regular miRNA blood tests in place of regular scans. They’ll only be offered scans if their blood test check-ups suggest the cancer might be coming back. 

The trial has the potential to establish the miRNA blood test as a much quicker and more convenient way to monitor the return of seminoma and dysgerminoma, all while saving the NHS money and lowering the risk of future cancers. 

We’re at the start of a long journey, but, thanks to this work, it should become much easier for young people to move on with the rest of their lives after their cancer treatment. 

4. Building an online hub for teenage and young adult cancer research 

Shortly after Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month 2024, we helped launch the UK’s first online community and education site for teenagers and young adults with cancer: TYAR.org.  

The project started in 2022, when Ben Hood, one of our senior research nurses, and Karen Hamlen, a Teenage Cancer Trust lead nurse, had an idea.  

The duo realised that a lack of understanding of cancer research was keeping young people from participating. Then they spotted a gap for good, clear information about how research into teenage and young adult cancers actually works. 

They teamed up with young people affected by cancer to fill it. 

“The website demystifies complex information into teenage and young adult patient friendly language, allowing patients to make a more informed decision about taking part in a clinical trial,” Hood told Nursing Times last year. 

More than that, TYAR.org is a community hub – with explainers, videos, frequently asked questions and useful links. Check it out!