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Scientific aims

The Centre for Paediatric Oncology Experimental Medicine aims to create novel treatments and diagnostic tests, and deliver changes in clinical practice, for children and young people with cancer. 

The Centre will do this through innovative clinical trials that are driven by our scientific understanding of children’s cancer development and guided by biomarker tests to ensure that we treat those patients most  likely to benefit from this approach. 

Abiraterone, a drug used to treat advanced prostate cancer was discovered and developed at the ICR

The Centre has several specific aims:

  1. Building the Infrastructure needed to support Translational Research. With our partners, we will accelerate the acquisition, banking, and detailed analysis of biological samples from patients, in order to build robust data on the molecular landscape of childhood cancers.
  2. Studying the unique Genetic Landscape of Childhood Cancers. We will conduct detailed studies on the largest possible sets of patient samples to discover and target the causes of paediatric cancer.
  3. Improving the ability to Detect, Diagnose and Treat Childhood Cancers. We will develop NHS-compatible tests that enable early detection, more precise diagnosis and treatment, and real-time, non-invasive monitoring of treatment response.
  4. Developing novel treatments for Children’s Cancers. With the ICR’s Division of Cancer Therapeutics and Centre for Evolution and Cancer, we will create novel small-molecule drugs and immunotherapies to target unique vulnerabilities in childhood cancer and combat treatment resistance. 
  5. Developing early-phase Clinical Trials in Children’s Cancer. Together with our clinical partners, we will take our translational research on children’s cancer into innovative clinical trials of novel therapeutics, guided by biomarker tests to predict and monitor drug efficacy. 
  6. Developing an academic training programme for young clinicians. We will identify promising and talented academic clinicians in paediatric oncology and create robust training opportunities for them.