Childhood cancer: hoping for a cure

In our latest campaign, we focus on the opportunities and challenges in the area of “innovative cancer therapies”. Even though the chances of young cancer patients recovering have improved incredibly over the last decades, there is still one child in five not surviving the illness. Furthermore, the majority of former childhood cancer patients have to fight late effects which can impair their quality of life permanently.

While innovative cancer therapies are revolutionising adult medicine, most children suffering from cancer continue to be treated with drugs that were developed decades ago and are actually only approved for adults. The reason: cancer in children is not a lucrative business for the pharmaceutical industry.

To ensure that these young patients are not forgotten about, the children’s and university hospitals as well as the SPOG are doing everything in their power to ensure they have access to the best, state-of-the-art cancer therapies: a difficult undertaking as their efforts are continuously hampered by a lack of financial resources and high administrative hurdles. Find out more here.

We are pleased that our campaign has met with such great media interest and that, since the middle of June, we have been able to make around 2.4 million people aware of this important subject. Take a look at the overview of all the important media features here.