Improvements in Childhood Cancer-survival under threat from clinical trial red tape: British experts warned

Childhood Cancer Survival rates will stall because red tape is hindering clinical trials and the development of new drugs. 

 

New regulations in medical research mean that is now more costly and difficult than ever before to conduct trials into new medicines and children's cancer survival rates may be hit as a result, it was warned in the journal Lancet Oncology. 

Survival rates from cancer in childhood have increased dramatically in the last 30 years, experts said, with figures showing that between 2001 and 2005, 78 per cent of children in Britain lived for more than five years after diagnosis.
This has increased from just nine per cent for some forms of cancer between 1966 and 1970. 

Professor Kathy Pritchard-Jones from the Institute of Child Health, University College London, wrote: "In high-income countries, we have nearly reached optimisation of present anticancer treatments. 

"New regulatory approval and research strategies are urgently needed to the more to speed the development of new, effective, and safer treatments for children with cancer if we are to continue to improve the cure rate, reduce toxicity compared to existing treatments, and minimise side effects in later life."