New Research Headed By:

Professor Andy Pearson                                          Dr Louis Chesler
The Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, UK                     University of San Francisco, California, USA


Details of their tasks and aims, in their own words:

Neuroblastoma is one of the commonest childhood malignancies. One type of Neuroblastoma - high risk disease - requires intensive therapy and the overall chance of cure is poor.

Neuroblastoma is one of the major causes of death from malignancy in children and childhood cancer is the principal cause of death between infancy and adulthood in the United Kingdom.

International cooperative trials are essential to improve the rate of cure of high risk neuroblastoma. However it is only possible by development of new drugs that a major improvement in survival rates will occur.

The Institute of Cancer Research is unique in having the world's only fully integrated academic cancer discovery unit and a key objective over the next decade is to develop drugs for children with Neuroblastoma who currently die from the disease. These new drugs focus on molecular mechanisms that drive high risk Neuroblastoma.

At the Institute of Cancer Research a team of scientists is being established which will work specifically on developing drugs to target Neuroblastoma and create a leading drug development centre for children.

Louis Chesler has just been appointed as a Team Leader at the Institute of Cancer Research from the University of San Francisco, California, USA. A group under his leadership are investigating how the MYCN gene in Neuroblastoma makes high risk disease so difficult to cure. Dr Chesler is also working on using P13 kinase inhibitors ( new anti cancer drugs ) in special models to see how the drug can be used to treat MYCN amplified Neuroblastoma.

We hope that the drug developed at the Institute of Cancer Research / Royal Marsden for Neuroblastoma will be used worldwide so that more children with Neuroblastoma can be cured.