Combatting pediatric cancer: Advocating for new medicines and treatments in Europe
Around 35,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year in the EU.
Transcript
00:00 The Kik Cancer Foundation is advocating for further research and investment in pediatric
00:06 cancer. Its managing director elaborates on why medicines and treatments against childhood
00:11 cancer are so insufficient in the European Union and the eventual solutions ahead.
00:23 The mechanism of cancer in children differs from the mechanism of cancer in adults. But
00:30 still some types of adult cancer will have a mechanism of action that can be similar
00:37 to the mechanism of action that you find in children. Yet these drugs that are developed
00:44 for adults will not benefit children and that's one of the aspects that we hope to solve in
00:53 the current reform of the pharmaceutical strategy and the pharmaceutical legislation in Europe.
01:00 We really hope now that every time a new drug is developed for adult cancers that we check
01:07 that it cannot help young patients with cancer. And even if the name of the disease is different
01:15 that we run the good clinical trials to make sure that children benefit from those new
01:22 medicines so that more of them can be cured but also benefit from the fact that with the
01:28 new treatments that are developed in cancer now that they benefit from more targeted treatments
01:35 and suffer from less long term side effects after their treatment.
01:40 [Music]