Research

Although not a research charity, Teenage Cancer Trust has both direct and indirect involvement in research issues concerning cancer and young people.

Professor of Teenage Cancer Medicine

We fund the country’s first Professor of Teenage Cancer Medicine who leads research into why young people get cancer and how best to treat it, ultimately improving diagnosis, treatment and survival rates.

Recent projects and research

  • Delays in diagnosing teenagers and young adults with cancer
  • Managing symptoms by mobile phone
  • Organisers of cancer clinical trials are neglecting teenagers and young adults

Advisory panel

In 2008, with the guidance of Professor Tim Eden, an advisory panel was set up for Teenage Cancer Trust. This advisory panel consists of just over 20 specialists in a variety of fields within the cancer field involving teenagers and young adults.

Each year at our Find Your Sense of Tumour Conference, largely informal research is carried out with delegates – young people who have or had cancer. It provides a vital opportunity for gathering information on patients' experience and their views.

Teenage Cancer Trust's involvement with the National Cancer Research Institute is a further input into research in the field.

Funded research projects

Teenage Cancer Trust has allocated small grants for research projects that enhance the services and support to teenagers and young adults with cancer and their families.

The most prominent of our research projects has been for the Institute of Child Health and the Advanced Symptom Management System with Young People (YG-ASyMS).

The YG-ASyMS system involves young people reporting their symptoms each day after having chemotherapy by completing a questionnaire on a mobile phone. The symptom reports are sent to a central server and can be viewed on a web page by nurses at the hospital. Reported symptoms can also be viewed on the phone in the form of graphs, which show how symptoms change over time. When symptoms are reported, the young person automatically receives a message giving them advice about what to do. If symptoms are severe or getting worse, a nurse is automatically paged to contact the young person at home to offer advice and support.

We are currently into the third phase where we are moving towards working with much larger numbers of young people across a range of different services throughout the UK.

Utilising a grant from a family who lost a young person to cancer, we have supported an international meeting of doctors and researchers specialising in germ cell tumours. As these are rare cancers, the only opportunity for furthering knowledge and expertise is international collaboration.

Interested in research?

For more information about our projects and grant allocation please contact:

Teenage Cancer Trust Services team:

Tel: 020 7612 0370