Research Portfolio

Grant Round 2024

Thanks to your kind donations, Neuroblastoma UK awarded five research grants in 2024 totalling £1.1 million. Our focus was to fund new innovative research into neuroblastoma. New therapeutic approaches, pathways to improve existing treatments and exploration of an MRNA vaccine are some of the projects to be funded in the 2024 grant round; with an emphasis on translational research which can be rapidly transferred from the lab bench to bedside.

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  • Prof Steve Archibald, King’s College, London will receive £268,301. This proposal aims to develop academic production of new molecular tracers to identify neuroblastoma in patients, to further clinical PET imaging trials in neuroblastoma and to develop efficient availability of the tracers required which is currently an area of great need.

  • Prof Louis Chesler from the Institute of Cancer Research and Prof John Anderson at University College, London have been awarded £254,120 for their studies to determine if the activity of CAR T cells can be increased either by external radiotherapy or by molecular therapy such as mIBG. The early evidence is the CAR T cells could be effective in high -risk neuroblastoma.

  • Prof Robert Falconer with associates Dr Steven Shnyder, Dr Ethan Perkins and Dr Goreti Ribeiro Morais from the University of Bradford have been awarded £188,039. This study will look at a new drug development of a less toxic new class of drug (ATR inhibitor) for the treatment of high risk neuroblastoma.ATR is a top priority therapeutic target for neuroblastoma.

  • Dr Olga Piskareva, lead applicant from RCSI University, Dublin, with co funders Prof Helen McCarthy (Queen’s Belfast), Dr Miguel Segura (Vall Hebron Research Institute, Barcelona), Dr Frank Westermann (German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg), Prof Juliet Gray (University of Southampton) and Dr Lucas Moreno (Vall Hebron Research Institute, Barcelona) will receive £208,887. Their research proposal builds on the mRNA vaccine approach. mRNA vaccines were successfully applied to COVID -19 and are now being tested in adult cancer. The hope is that mRNA neuroblastoma vaccine may reduce the rate of relapse of high risk neuroblastoma and could exhibit possible relevance to other areas of paediatric oncology.

  • Dr Andrew Stoker, Dr Steve Hart and Dr Pascale Guillot from University College, London have been awarded £183,207. Retinoic acid is currently a standard part of maintenance therapy for high-risk neuroblastoma. This research project will focus on increasing the activity of retinoic acid which could potentially have long-term clinical benefits and advances in toxin gene delivery.

Grant Round 2021

Thanks to your kind donations, Neuroblastoma UK awarded two research grants in 2021 totalling £683,477, with a focus on improving treatment for children with advanced stages of the disease.

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  • Professor Louis Chesler will receive a research grant of £469,093, which includes a donation of £15,000 from charity Friends of Rosie. Professor Chesler’s research aims to develop blood-based biomarker tests for children with high-risk neuroblastoma, to help guide and monitor treatment.

  • Dr Mark Gaze will receive a research grant of £214,385 to develop a new type of targeted, radiotherapy using radioactive antibodies for children with high-risk neuroblastoma.

Grant Round 2018

Thanks to our generous supporters, we provided funding for nine new research studies in 2019, as part of our 2018 grant round, with a total funding of £1.177 million.

Research ranges from studies to understand the origin and development of neuroblastoma to research that aims to develop new therapeutic approaches or improve existing treatments.

Grant Round 2016

Neuroblastoma UK received 19 interesting applications in response to our 2016 research competition.  We are very grateful to the applicants for submitting their proposals, the many peer reviewers that provided very useful comments and the valuable discussion, assessment and advice received from the Neuroblastoma UK Scientific Advisory Board for 2016.

  • £197,732 over two years has been awarded to Professor Louis Chesler

    Project: “Targeting ATRX Loss of Function and Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT) in High-Risk Neuroblastoma (HR-NB)”.  This work aims to develop effective treatments for children which do not respond to current therapies and have a very poor prognosis.

  • £115,073 over 3 years has been awarded to Professor Arturo Sala

    Project: “Investigating the role of exosomes in MYCN tumourigenesis”. This work is investigating a process of how neuroblastoma cells might spread throughout the body.

  • £58,982 over one year has been awarded to Professor Anna Philpott

    Project: “Synergistic interaction between the master regulator Ascl1 and Wnt signalling drives neuroblastoma”. This project is investigating a new and promising target for therapy based on results from studying the differentiation of neuroblastoma cells.

  • £24,636 has been contributed in part-funding for a project developing more efficient immunotherapy protocols. The project is also funded by Action Medical Research (who are administering the project) and Great Ormond Street Hospital. The work is run by Dr John Anderson and is entitled “Optimising Cellular Immunotherapy for neuroblastoma”.

Grant Round 2015

  • £70,000 over three years was awarded to Dr Juliet Gray

    Project: “Combining immunomodulatory monoclonal antibodies with chemotherapy to generate therapeutic neuroblastoma immunity”.  A further £20,000 has been contributed locally making the total cost £90,000. The aim of this work is to determine which combinations of immunotherapy and chemotherapy are likely to be most effective to combat neuroblastoma.

Grant Round 2014

  • £106,237 over two years was awarded to Professor Susan Burchill and Professor Deborah Tweddle

    Project: “Isolation and characterisation of neuroblastoma cells in the bone marrow to inform therapeutic benefit”. These studies aim to improve treatment for children in relapse by identifying the few cancer cells that may still be present after treatment and cause relapse.

  • £206,273 over three years was awarded to Dr Louis Chesler

    Project: “Therapeutic Inhibition of MYCN – discovery and targeting of novel MYCN binding proteins in neuroblastoma”. The project follows on from previous studies and aims to find out ways of inhibiting the action of MYCN, which is associated with a major effect on the severity of neuroblastoma. The project includes studies in preclinical models.

  • £59,958 over two years was awarded to Professor Rob Mairs, Dr Colin Rae and Dr Mark Gaze

    Project: “177Lu-DOTATATE combined with radiosensitisers to enhance targeted radiotherapy of neuroblastoma”. Action Medical Research has contributed a further £119,916, making the total cost of the project £179,874. These studies aim improve the efficiency of radiotherapy.

  • £183,958 over 2.5 years was awarded to Dr Violaine See, Dr Diana Moss, Professor Paul Losty and Professor Barry Pizer

    Project: “Advanced in vivo imaging and transcriptomic analysis of neuroblastoma metastasis in a chick embryo model”. The work aims to understand neuroblastoma metastasis and suggest ways in which it might be reduced.

  • £118,643 over three years was awarded to Dr Karim Malik, Dr David Matthews and Dr Sebastien Oltean

    Smile with Siddy has contributed a further £55,000, making the total cost of the project £173,673.

    Project: “A novel target for destabilization of the MYCN oncoprotein”. This project is looking at one specific method for inhibiting MYCN, an important neuroblastoma oncoprotein.

  • £178,571 over two years was awarded to Dr Anna Philpott and Dr Louis Chesler

    Project: “Therapeutic use of kinase inhibitors to reactivate neuroblastoma differentiation”. This project is examining ways of inducing neuroblastoma cells to revert to normal behaviour and differentiate.

  • £47,234 over three years was awarded to Dr Deborah Tweddle and Dr Lindi Chen

    Niamh‘s Next Step has contributed a further £75,000 making the total cost of the project £122,234.

    Project: “Preclinical testing of combinations of new therapies which target the genetic defects present in neuroblastoma”. This aims to identify whether there are any particularly effective combinations of new drugs for neuroblastomas which are associated with known genetic defects.

Grant Round 2012

  • £213,844 over three years awarded to Dr Louis Chesler

    Project entitled “Development of ALK-targeted therapeutic strategies using genetically-engineered models of ALK-driven neuroblastoma”.

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Clinical Trials and Studies

  • £30,000 was awarded to SIOPEN (International Society of Paediatric Oncology - Europe Neuroblastoma) through the UK co-ordinator Dr Kate Wheeler to provide financial support for half of the UK‘s SIOPEN annual levy.  This work is also supported by other UK neuroblastoma charities.

  • £11,876 was awarded to Dr Michael Pike, Dr Ming Lim and Dr Bethan Lang to support the "UK Multicentre Study of Children with Opsoclonus Myoclonus Syndrome (UMSCOM)"