We gifted £1million to the University College London (UCL) in early 2018 to set up the Tom Prince Osetosarcoma Research Project.

It’s the largest donation to Osteosarcoma research in the UK! The funds have set up the first UK-wide Osteosarcoma research project which aims to improve the survival and treatment of patients.

The project is employing expert staff to do focused research on this specific cancer – this is exactly what we fundraised for and it’s really exciting to see things progress!

We met with the team in late 2018 and it was inspiring to see their expertise, dedication and enthusiasm. The team is headed by a leader in the field, Professor Adrienne Flanagan,  and together they’re pushing the boundaries of our understanding of this rare cancer, working to make discoveries that will change the lives of those diagnosed with the disease.

The research is currently focused in three areas:

– Building a collection of osteosarcomas to be analysed as part of the 100,000 Genomes Project. This has been successful and already 200 samples from 80 patients have been submitted. By comparison, it previously took Professor Flanagan 10 years to collect samples from 70 patients, and only one sample per patient. This work will represent the largest collection of primary osteosarcomas to be analysed globally.

– Analysing the epigenetics of samples. This will help us understand if it is possible to predict which patients are likely to respond to chemotherapy. Although chemotherapy is a long used treatment, it is still not known which patients will respond to it, and some suffer from the treatment. So being able to identify who would and would not respond would be a huge step forward in understanding treatment for patients.

– The project will recruit a PhD student to explore if the immune system can be used to help develop new treatments. There have been major advances in this type of therapy, called immunotherapy for other cancers so it is an exciting area.

Click here to read the short update report from UCL.

Thank you once again to every single person who supported the Trust and got us to this point!