Children are being denied potentially life-saving cancer drugs because European Union (EU) rules are allowing companies to trial a number of drugs on only adults.
Changes in how the EU rules are implemented could prevent company from excluding children under 18 from the trials, opening up a wide range of previously unavailable cancer treatments, an Institute of Cancer Research news release reported.
Current EU rules allow some pharmaceutical companies to opt out of expensive drug trials in children under 18, even if there is reason to believe the drugs would be beneficial to individuals in this age range.
The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London has asked the EU to eliminate these waivers and exemptions in hopes of saving the lives of younger cancer patients.
Out of 26 cancer drugs that have been approved for European adults since 2007 all of them showed the potential to benefit children, but 16 were exempted from childhood testing.
"Increasing the number of [pediatric] cancer trials can have enormous benefits for children with cancer, by increasing the number of drugs available to them, improving doctors' knowledge about how best to use drugs in children, and providing treatment in a best-practice clinical trial environment," Doctor Louis Chesler, Reader in Paediatric Solid Tumour Biology and Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Honorary Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said in the news release.
"Modern cancer treatments are often targeted at genetic features of the [tumor] that may be common to a number of [tumor] types, and to adults' and children's cancers. That means a drug developed for a cancer in adults could also be effective against a cancer affecting a completely different part of the body in children. The way EU rules are implemented fails to take this into account,"
The ICR has also suggested financial incentives for companies that develop drugs for smaller populations.
"Our scientists are doing phenomenal work understanding the evolution of cancer and how to tackle it. However, that work is being held back by rules which harm patient care. Childhood cancer is a tragic reality for thousands of families, and it makes no sense to restrict research into potentially life-saving new treatments," Paul Burstow, MP for Sutton and Cheam and former health minister said in the news release. "It is important that we have rules to govern the ethical pursuit of new medicines, but these rules must be grounded in scientific reality and human need."
