5 July 2016 - Children with cancer are being denied access to lifesaving treatments because EU laws are failing to keep pace with advances in medicine, doctors warned today.

An international coalition of 23 experts demanded “urgent” moves to enable drugs already used on adults, such as those for lung and breast cancer, to be made available to children.

It follows the discovery that changes within genes that cause childhood cancers are also seen in mutations causing different adult cancers — meaning already-approved drugs could be re-purposed for younger patients.

Concerns have been sparked by the failure to improve paediatric cancer survival rates to above 80 per cent over the past 25 years. There is also a belief that child cancer patients are seen as an “afterthought” by the drugs industry. The small number of patients means there is little financial incentive to hold paediatric drug trials.

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