Children with Cancer UK responds to calls for gene testing revolution by Chief Medical Officer

There was welcome news this morning (4th July) as England’s chief medical officer Prof Dame Sally Davies said in her annual report that cancer patients should be routinely offered DNA tests to help select the best treatments for them. Precision medicine has huge potential for treating cancer in a kinder, more effective way, through better targeted chemotherapy, introducing advances in immunotherapy and using other evolving technologies. This is particularly crucial for children and young people, where the toxic treatments used to save lives can take a heavy toll. However, progress in the UK has been lagging behind parts of Europe and the USA – largely due to a lack of development funding in the NHS. That is why charities like ours are funding pioneering work to put in place the infrastructure that we need for rapid sequencing of tumour DNA and drive forward the implementation of precision medicine. We are proud to be leading the way – in March we announced a ground-breaking £1.5m funding to advance Precision Medicine in the UK, and make this field of treatment a reality for children and young adults diagnosed with cancer.