Our research strategy

Research into causes, alleviation and prevention

Because little is known about what causes children to develop leukaemia, we need to find explanations for the increasing incidence and develop interventions that can reduce incidence.

Specific objectives:

• To fund world class research aimed at improving our knowledge of the genetic and environmental causes, and relevant biological mechanisms, of childhood leukaemia.

• To disseminate the results of this research with a view to developing preventive strategies.

Research into treatments

Although more than three quarters of children diagnosed with leukaemia survive, there are still around a hundred children in the UK every year who do not. Those who do survive undergo unpleasant treatment regimes which can themselves cause serious long-term damage to their health and wellbeing.

Specific objectives

• To fund world-class research aimed at optimising and developing more effective and less toxic treatments for childhood leukaemia, with a special focus on those forms which still have a poor prognosis.

[Updated November 2007]