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Dutch and German scientists have recently started working in cooperation to help 35,000 children with cancer in the European community every year. The transnational research cooperation in pediatric oncology has set itself the goal of minimizing the death rate as well as the consequences of treatments such as damage and impairments resulting from surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. To this end, the Dutch Prinses Máxima Centrum in Utrecht and the Heidelberg Hopp Children’s Tumour Centre, KiTZ for short, an institution of the German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg University Hospital, and Heidelberg University, are working together.

A pediatric oncology research fund has been set up with an initial sum of one million euros for eight to ten research projects to develop new therapies that are more tolerable for children and have fewer side effects. After all, many of them have to live with terrible consequences after surviving cancer, such as heart and kidney damage, but also neurological problems and infertility. Alternative innovative forms of treatment from the field of molecularly targeted areas and immunotherapies in combination with conventional methods could be target-oriented, explains Stefan Pfister as head and director at the KiTZ.

Pediatric cancers are a small and not very lucrative market for pharmaceutical companies, accounting for only one percent of all tumor diseases, but with an upward trend. That is why scientists want to force pharmaceutical manufacturers to test the efficacy of a cancer drug also on European children, because of the larger number needed. This is only made possible by the European Medicines Agency, which only approves such a drug when it has also provided proof of studies with young test persons between 0 and 18 years of age.

Pfister expects another 10 million euros from private sponsors in Europe in the coming weeks to invest in the research infrastructure. Children often suffer from 200 different tumors that are no longer relevant in adults. Today, however, 20 percent of all children still do not survive certain forms of leukemia, lymphomas, sarcomas, and brain tumors. The cooperating team of scientists no longer wants to accept this fact.

Source: www.aerzteblatt.de