New medicines to tackle pedriatic cancer 'imperative' in Europe

euronews (in English)

Some 35,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year in the EU.

Transcript

00:00 Back in 2016, Fay suddenly started falling ill quite frequently.

00:12 From November to Christmas in December, we pretty literally spent every weekend in the

00:17 hospital.

00:18 After January, after New Year, our girl lost the functionality of her left arm.

00:25 That triggered one of the doctors an alert signal and they took an x-ray of the brain.

00:35 Then they sent the tumor to the lab and five days later they brought us the news that the

00:40 tumor was actually an aggressive type of brain tumor called ATRT, a very rare indication

00:46 which doesn't occur that often at all in children.

00:50 But when you're diagnosed with that malignancy, you know that you don't really have a lot

00:57 of options.

01:02 Fay lived with her parents in Giel, Belgium.

01:06 She was treated with a combination of chemo and radiotherapy.

01:12 Fay passed away some six months after the diagnosis.

01:16 She was just two years old.

01:21 All of these therapies are technologies of let's say the middle of the last century.

01:26 The chemotherapy compounds, they were developed in the 60s of the last century and they're

01:32 used today still to attack these tumors because there's no more precise therapeutic available

01:38 in the clinical world today.

01:42 Fay is not an isolated case.

01:45 Some 35,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year in the EU.

01:50 Incidents can almost amount to 18 cases of every 100,000 children and young adults.

02:04 Further research, investments and regulatory efforts are thus imperative.

02:08 There's a foundation advocating for more action against cancer in children.

02:14 Delphine Henin is the founder and managing director of Kik Cancer based in Brussels.

02:22 We need to cure certain types of cancer.

02:25 Some patients we know today when they're diagnosed, they will never cure for cancer and yet they

02:31 don't have access to new drugs and there is no ongoing research to look for new drugs

02:38 for those children.

02:39 So we need new drugs to cure certain children with cancer.

02:44 Then many children with cancer will survive and will be cured but the treatments are very

02:51 toxic in the short term so the treatments are very long and very hard.

02:57 It means that young people are taken out of the social life, school and that's very hard

03:04 at a stage in your life where you need to develop.

03:10 The European Commission's pharmaceutical reform wants paediatric studies finalised within

03:14 five years so products reach child patients quicker.

03:21 The EC has also proposed that all new medicines that might be of interest for children are

03:26 indeed screened for their use.

03:39 Simplifying procedures, increasing transparency and enhancing networking between patients,

03:44 families, academics and medicine developers should also help speed up the authorisation

03:49 of medicines for children, the Commission claims.

03:52 Children are not small adults.

03:55 Children need frequently totally different treatments and medicines.

04:00 We have put children and young adults in the spotlight by providing different incentives,

04:06 by rewarding innovation in order to have more research and development.

04:17 For the past year, maybe two years, I'm hearing a lot more positive indications that people

04:22 are really looking for collaboration.

04:23 Public institutions are also aware of their responsibility and if you combine pharma with

04:28 public and you create a structure where they can pool resources and can targetedly look

04:34 at paediatrics, it should be possible.

04:39 It's not sending a rocket to Mars either.

04:41 This is something where you need hundreds of millions but not hundreds of billions of

04:46 euros.

04:47 We are outside of the realm of reality I think to expect that something is going to work

04:53 in the next five to ten years.

04:54 [Music]

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