In our new video series, ‘Inside Supportive Care’, we’re taking you behind the scenes of the Candlelighters Supportive Care Research Centre. Opened in 2023, the centre is leading world-class research to reduce side effects from treatment, enabling young people to have the fullest life possible during treatment and increasing their chances of survival.
When most people think of childhood cancer treatment, they think of chemotherapy, drugs, surgery, and radiation. But there is another crucial element that makes this treatment survivable and life liveable: supportive care.
Supportive care is everything outside of curing the cancer itself – managing infections, pain, nausea, nutrition, emotional health, and the visible effects of treatment. Yet this vital aspect of childhood cancer care is underfunded and overlooked. Supportive care simply doesn’t generate the huge international trials that exist for anti-cancer treatment. There is an urgent need for better research for supportive care for children.
That is why in 2023, we launched the Candlelighters Supportive Care Research Centre at the University of York – the first dedicated centre in the world focused on improving how children are cared for during cancer treatment.
Why is Supportive Care so Important?
The statistics are sobering: of all children who sadly die with cancer, one in three die not because of cancer but because of the side effects of their treatment. Around two-thirds of childhood cancer survivors live with life-altering side effects from their treatment.
Finding more effective, kinder approaches is the best and fastest way to improve the lives of children with cancer. Not only will it reduce suffering, it will save lives.
Children receiving cancer treatments often designed for adults suffer devastating effects on their smaller bodies. They suffer horrible side effects including skin reactions, lost appetite and malnutrition, mouth ulcers, impaired growth, anxiety, depression, pain, nausea and vomiting, lethargy, exhaustion, bleeding and bruising, diarrhoea, and constipation. The aim of supportive care is not only to ensure that children can live their lives as comfortably as possible, but also to help save children’s lives.
Excellent supportive care means a child might be well enough to attend their best friend’s birthday party or catch the opening weekend of their favourite film with siblings. But it is also about preventing life-threatening infections and ensuring chemotherapy can be delivered on time. Without excellent supportive care, children can become too sick to attend chemotherapy appointments, families can fall apart under the strain, and children can pass away from infections rather than the cancer itself.
The Candlelighters Supportive Care Research Centre addresses the areas where we can make the biggest difference to children’s lives, based on what matters most to patients and families.
A Pioneering Approach
Supportive care research has traditionally been done in single centres with little collaboration. Our centre brings together individual studies, develops them into clinical trials, and leads to implementation.
The Candlelighters Supportive Care Research Centre is not a single study; it is an ambitious programme looking at the wider needs of supportive care putting patients and families at the very heart of everything we do. It funds top experts to carry out high-quality research and builds capacity by investing in future supportive care specialists. The centre enables ‘pump-priming’ research, which is the seed funding to launch new studies.
The Candlelighters Supportive Care Research Centre is a five-year project costing just under £1m – a small investment for the thousands of lives it can improve, save, and transform.
Already, we are creating moments that truly matter, moments that don’t just change lives but save them. Our research centre is pioneering work that will transform children’s experiences locally, nationally, and globally.
Could you make a donation to support the Candlelighters Supportive Care Research Centre today?
