FKC – Projects 2022

FIGHT KIDS CANCER (FKC) is a collaborative initiative by KickCancer (Belgium), Imagine for Margo (France), the Kriibskrank Kanner Foundation (Luxembourg), CRIS Cancer Foundation (Spain & United Kingdom), and KiKa (the Netherlands). Our goal is to promote the most innovative treatments through collaboration between academic researchers and the funding of research on paediatric cancer across European countries.

The 7 research projects described below have been selected by independent experts as part of our 2022 European call for projects (in addition to 3 projects funded exclusively by Imagine for Margo and KiKa).

All these projects are presented below in a summary format. If you wish to find out more about these, a detailed description of the research activities is available in English only on the FIGHT KIDS CANCER website. The link to the page of each project is indicated under its short description.

It is thanks to the participation of 1,650 runners in RUN TO KICK 2022 that the following innovative projects were funded:

1/ BEACON 2: a clinical trial for relapsed neuroblastoma

The BEACON 2 trial will test two new promising anti-cancer medicines that will be combined with chemotherapy. The first drug specifically targets the blood vessels that help tumours grow to slow or impede the tumour’s growth and eventually lead to the death of the tumour cells. The second drug is an immunotherapy drug that enables our immune system to recognise the cancer cells as strangers in a patient’s body. Beacon2 aims at confirming which of these two treatments is superior in a large group of patients.

Type of study: Clinical trial

Disease: Neuroblastome

More information can be found here (in English only).

2/ HEM-iSMART: a personalised medicine trial on leukemia and lymphoma

The HEM-iSMART is a personalised medicine trial in which children with relapsed leukaemia or lymphoma will receive a treatment corresponding to the specific genetic alteration(s) present in their tumour. The HEM-iSMART trial aims at testing four new therapies, each one matching a specific genetic alteration present in the tumour of the patients. This new approach, the first to tackle this issue at a European level, will be carried out in collaboration with the International Leukaemia Target Board (ILTB).

Type of study: Clinical trial

Disease: Leukaemia or lymphoma

More information can be found here (in English only).

3/ Sacha International: a study to secure innovative therapies administered outside of clinical trials

The SACHA international registry will collect real-life data about innovative therapies administered outside clinical trials to children, adolescents and young adults with paediatric malignancies. These real-life data will help to:

1) Recommend the halt of the prescription of the drugs that show to be ineffective or have an unacceptable toxicity,

2) Support the development of paediatric clinical trials when new anti-tumour activity is observed.

This project is a pragmatic response to the insufficiency of clinical trials available for young patients with cancer and meets the need to collect reliable clinical data as if the new therapies were administered in the framework a clinical trial.

Type of study: Clinical trial

Disease: All types of cancer

More information can be found here (in English only).

4/ GEN1029: Relapse prevention in neuroblastoma

It was recently demonstrated that neuroblastoma tumour cells in the relapsed patients responding to treatment and those in the patients not responding to treatments were different: the refractory cells are immature cells type. This project aims to test a new generation of that class of drug, called GEN1029, on a mouse xenograft relapse model for neuroblastoma to see if this drug is capable of inhibiting the developments of relapses.

Type of study: Translational project

Disease: neuroblastoma

More information can be found here (in English only).

5/ Cure2MLL: finding a cure for MLL-mutated childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)

ALL can almost be considered as a curable disease. Unfortunately, this is not true for all patients diagnosed with ALL, especially not for infants, i.e., children under 1 year of age. This project pursues two objectives. First of all, it aims at understanding the mechanisms which make infant ALL so aggressive. Second, it will attempt to identify new treatment options by targeting the infant-specific mechanisms (MLL mutation) and providing evidence to show that these newly identified treatments could be efficient when applied to patients in the clinic.

Type of study: Translational project

Disease: MLL-Acute lymphoblastic Leukaemia

More information can be found here (in English only).

6/ PG-LMA: a new genomic methodology for treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML)

This project is looking for better therapies to help young patients with AML, which receive more toxic treatments, yet with lower cure rates, than patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). In the field of ALL, treatments were improved thanks to the development of highly sensitive genomic technologies to monitor the response of leukaemia to therapy. This project proposes a novel genomic based methodology to overcome the challenge of lack of sensitive monitoring method in AML. This project will utilise a novel approach to not only identify response to therapy but also to characterise the leukemic cells that remain resistant to therapy. This could also lead to identification of novel drugs that may beat this resistance.

Type of study: Translational project

Disease: Acute myeloblastic leukaemia

More information can be found here (in English only).

7/ DigiTwins: improving neuroblastoma therapy

For this project, an international team of computer scientists, biologists, and clinicians will collaborate to build computer models of patients (Digital Twins), which will allow the design of personalised therapies that are more efficient and less toxic than the current therapies. The team will start by building “DigiTwins” of mouse models with neuroblastoma. The team will then use advanced computational methods to combine the generated molecular data and construct the Digital Twin models. Once the accuracy of the DigiTwin models in mice is ascertained, it will be translated to humans. The final objective of DigiTwins project is to pave the way for future clinical studies, where DigiTwins can provide better and more personalised treatments for neuroblastoma patients.

Type of study: Translational project

Disease: Neuroblastoma

More information can be found here (in English only).

In 2022, 3 additional projects that had been appraised as fundable by our international independent experts were funded by FIGHT KIDS CANCER members on their own:

• BT4ChildLC on liver cancer, by KiKa
• NEWtargets on Ewing’s sarcoma, by KiKa
• CoBioRB on retinoblastoma, by Imagine for Margo (France).

As these projects were “rescued” from the reserve list after the organisation of RUN TO KICK, KickCancer did not take part in the funding of these, although they could be funded thanks to the FIGHT KIDS CANCER initiative.