The Trust

Over the last 20 years great advances have been made in the treatment of leukaemia and roughly 4 out of 5 are cured. Sadly for children like Finn whose leukaemia does not respond to treatment there is no cure. Treatment has improved the outcome over the last few decades through changes in dosage and better management of the side effects, but few new drugs have been developed.

The Blizard Institute

T–cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia represents just 10% of all childhood ALL diagnosis. We decided that we would like to fund research directly into this disease, which is why we have decided to sponsor a PHD student at the Lab of T-cell Immunology at the Blizard Institute of Cell & Molecular Science of the Barts and London School of Medicine.

The treatment of leukaemia is long, 3 and half years. During this time a great deal of time is spent in the local hospital. Children and generally cared for on the paediatric ward, which does not have the resources of the specialist centres such as Gt Ormond Street. We wanted to raise funds to improve the facilities, services and support available to children and their families during treatment for childhood cancers at the Whittington Hospital.

There are plenty of magnificent charities funding research and supporting families whose children have cancer, we just felt that at local area it was easy to feel lost and isolated and also more research was needed for what is in effect an orphan disease.

The trust was set up with the following objectives:

• To gain charitable status
• To fund research that looks into further understanding the causes and development of T-cell Leukaemia and identifying new treatments and therapies to improve the outcome of children with resistant disease.
• To improve the facilities and services available to children and their families during their frequent stays at the Whittington Hospital to manage the infections and side effects that arise from the chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment of leukaemia and childhood cancers.

So far the trust has donated funds to the Paediatric Oncology Team at the Whittington Hospital and we are currently raising the £80,000 needed to fund an additional PHD student at the Lab of T-cell Immunology to undertake research into the causes and treatments of T-cell leukaemia in children.