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]