We are a children’s cancer research charity based in Manchester. We provide funding to kickstart new research projects looking for gentler and more effective treatments for children with cancer.
It is a little-known fact that childhood cancer receives less funding in the UK than any other type of cancer. While this is mainly due to its relative rarity in comparison to adult cancers, the lasting effects of cancer treatments have a far greater impact on a child’s growing body. Kinder, gentler, and more effective treatments are desperately needed for children, many of whom are currently being treated with the same harsh cancer drugs as adults.
Each year, charity funds permitting, we issue a grant call to research and medical institutions across the UK to apply for funding. The research projects that we help to get off the ground can lead to critical breakthroughs in our global understanding of childhood cancer and a step change in the way children with cancer are diagnosed and treated. Our funds give researchers one to two years of preliminary data in order to attract larger scale funding from other institutions.
We aim to award more research grants to help get pioneering ideas off the ground to help children with cancer. We currently receive more grant applications than we can afford to fund. With the funds raised, we aim to give more promising research ideas the chance to make a difference. As paediatric cancer research is underfunded, there is a significant risk of fewer researchers being attracted to this field in the future. We aim to support and encourage more promising young investigators at the beginning of their careers, to choose paediatric cancer as their field of research.
Our mission is for the projects we fund to secure longer-term funding from other charities and organisations. We enable the researchers to obtain one or two years of data to then give them the evidence needed to take the research project to the next stage. It is always our hope that the projects we kick-start will eventually get to clinical trial stage and ultimately improve treatments for children with cancer and give us a better understanding of the biology of childhood cancer.
Researchers we fund must provide two progress reports per year. Our Scientific Committee assess these reports to ensure projects are on track and meeting proposed objectives. At the end of a project, the researcher provides a full written report, which must also detail what applications have been made to secure further funding. We aim for all research projects to be published in relevant medical journals so they can be shared with the wider childhood cancer research community.
