Thread by @bloodcancer_uk

🩸 We were started in 1960 by a family who lost their 6-year-old daughter to leukaemiaand so funding research into childhood blood cancer has always been a key part of our work.

🔬So this International #ChildhoodCancerDay we wanted to share just how far our research has come...

🎉 Improvements to blood cancer treatments now mean 89% of children survive leukaemia and lymphoma, up from 79% 20 years ago!

🤗This means that 700 more children and young people survived blood cancer who wouldn’t have done if the survival rate had stayed the same. #ICCD2022

🙌The improvement in childhood leukaemia survival has been amazing, and we are so proud of the role our research has played in helping improve treatments for childhood leukaemia...

Let's talk about the minimal residual disease (MRD) test: one of the biggest #cancer breakthroughs of the last 30 years.

🔎 In the 1990s we funded 2 researchers who developed a method for detecting cancer cells that are left behind in the blood or bone marrow after #treatment

💊 The MRD test is now used worldwide as the gold standard for assessing responses to treatment, and helps #doctors to make sure each child gets the right strength of treatment for their disease.

👶 But in some types of leukaemia for babies aged under 1, the survival rate is still tragically low.

🔬 That’s why we’re funding Professor Katrin Ottersbach at the University of Edinburgh to try to find out more about why leukaemia develops in babies...

... "The overall goal of our research is to discover and develop new treatments that specifically benefit these really vulnerable young children and that are kinder and that improve their survival." - Katrin

If you would like to see kinder treatments developed for more children this #ICCD2022, please consider making a donation towards research like Katrin's.

Because research will beat blood cancer❤️
bloodcancer.org.uk/get-involved/w…