€5.7 million for novel treatment approaches in pediatric brain cancer

A child who suffers from low grade brain cancer usually has very good chances of survival. However, therapy is often very long and stressful. In addition, the difficult location of the tumor often makes it impossible to remove it completely. Then there is a danger that it might come back after some time.

Although the disease and its consequences often affect patients throughout their lifetimes, research into low grade brain cancer has not received much funding in the past. At the newly founded Everest Centre, scientists from KiTZ in Heidelberg will collaborate with researchers of UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and the Blizard Institute of Queen Mary University in London to uncover the biological basics of this complex disease and use their findings to develop novel, targeted and gentler treatment approaches.

"The Everest Centre initiative will now enable us much better to investigate low grade brain tumors, which are rather common in children," said David Jones, who pursues research at DKFZ and KiTZ in Heidelberg and coordinates the network from there. "For the first time, we can give this type of tumor the attention that is needed in order to be able to offer affected children more effective and gentler therapies some day."

Low grade brain tumors constitute the largest group of tumors of the central nervous system. Each year, more than 250 children and adolescents under 18 are diagnosed with this type of tumor in Germany alone. Low grade brain cancer arises from transformed cells in the brain or spinal cord. However, the risk of tumor cells spreading to other parts of the body is low.

The name of 'Everest Centre' was inspired by a spectacular activity that a father of an affected child undertook to draw attention to his son's debilitating disease story. In a group of 14 skiers, he climbed alpine slopes for four days until they had climbed the equivalent of the height of Mount Everest, thus raising £3 million for the Brain Tumour Charity.

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Caption: Examining tumor cells in the laboratory

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