Q: Tell us about your career so far?
A: I am Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Oncology at the University of Manchester and Honorary Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. I’m also the national lead for the ECMC Paediatric Network. I trained in paediatrics in Bristol and Sheffield, and came to Manchester to do a PhD in 1997 and am still here 25 years later!
Q: Have you always wanted to work in paediatric oncology?
A: Working with children is both the most demanding and the most interesting type of medicine, so paediatrics was always what I wanted to specialise in. Oncology was the part of paediatrics that I found most interesting. I liked the focus on running trials to provide evidence for the best treatment, and being part of a team of so many different professionals all working towards a common goal.
Q: Tell us about the Paediatric Network ECMC?
A: We established the network in 2012, linking all the centres in the UK that were able to run early phase trials of new drugs for childhood cancer. The network can identify where the best trials are for any individual patients, and makes it easy for families to be referred to other centres. The ECMC-funded research nurses are brilliant at collecting and processing patient samples, recruiting families to studies, and supporting them while they’re on trial. Previously the network has been funded by Cancer Research UK and National Institute for Health and Care Research, and from next year The Little Princess Trust will also become a funder.
The network can identify where the best trials are for any individual patients.
Q: What’s the most rewarding thing about your job?
A: Working together as a team to get everything done as quickly as possible to make a diagnosis and deliver a treatment plan for a new patient can be very satisfying. It can be a relief for families to know what they are dealing with, and to start treatment.
Q: What is the proudest moment of your career so far?
A: The main aim of the Paediatric Network ECMC was to improve access to experimental cancer medicines for children. I am very pleased that it has been able to make sure that families get offered the same opportunities to take part in trials whether they live in Inverness or London. It was amazing that even during the COVID pandemic we were still able to keep most trials open so that families could still access new drugs.
Q: What are the challenges involved in clinical trials?
A: Opening trials for children can sometimes still take too long and be too complicated, and we need to be better at helping families actually enter trials, even though we have ensured families are offered the same opportunities regardless of where they live.
Q: What area of your current work excites you the most?
A: It is very exciting to see modern platform trials with multiple targeted agents, offering trial options for patients even when they have very rare genetic changes in their tumours. We’re getting ever-increasing amounts of information about the biology of children's cancer at relapse and we need to take the opportunity to create a system that will allow us to use these different types of information to make the right decisions for each child's treatment.
Q: Any final words for this CCAM edition of Contact?
A: Children's cancer can be easily lost in the vastness of adult cancer. We will keep fighting to be seen and heard, to make sure that children's cancer isn't ignored and is seen as a priority for funding. Better treatments come from more research and more research needs more money.
From Contact magazine issue 96 - Autumn 2022
