Childhood Cancer Info

Children with Cancer UK is delighted to support the Beads of Courage Oncology Programme in the UK. The Beads of Courage UK programme offers support and strength to families when they need it most.

The types of cancer affecting children, as well as what causes cancer in children, are quite different to those affecting adults. 
Several types of cancer are virtually unique to children, but the cancers most often seen in adults – including those of the lung, breast ...

Find out all the childhood cancer facts and figures for those aged 0-14 years in the UK.

The outlook for children with cancer has improved dramatically over the last 50 years. In the early 1960s, three quarters of children diagnosed with cancer died. Today, more than three quarters of children survive. However this high overall survival rate masks wide variation between different ...

Learn about chemotherapy

Complementary therapies are thought to be used by up to a third of cancer sufferers. These therapies may be used alongside the conventional treatments such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, not as an alternative.
Complementary therapies are generally used to help with the symptoms of disease and the side effects of ...

Cancer immunotherapy refers to the use of treatments that harness and enhance the natural powers of the immune system to fight cancer.

An update from Dhivya O’Connor, CEO of Children with Cancer UK.  7th January 2019
“We welcome the announcement of funding from NHS England for DNA testing for children with cancer to help select the best treatment.
Precision medicine has huge potential for treating cancer in ...

Learn about radiotherapy

A stem cell transplant is used to restore normal blood cell production in people whose bone marrow has been damaged.
A stem cell transplant (SCT) allows children to have much higher doses of chemotherapy than they could otherwise tolerate. This improves the chance of curing ...

Surgery plays a very important part in the treatment of cancer.

Below are some of the terms commonly used when talking about the treatment of childhood cancer. Click on the term to reveal the explanation.

Leukaemic cancer cells left in the body after treatment are referred to as Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) and are the major cause of relapse.

Around 2,200 15 to 24-year-olds are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK.
This age group is referred to as ‘teenage and young adult’ or ‘TYA’.
TYA cancers bridge the gap between paediatric and adult oncology: many of the childhood cancers no longer feature ...

Christmas is usually a wonderful time of year filled with family, friends, and festivities.  Sadly, thousands of children spend their Christmas in hospital, feeling sick from their cancer treatments.

4,500 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK. That’s ten every day.
The types of cancer affecting children are quite different from the cancers that affect teenagers and young adults (TYA); TYA cancers are different again from the types ...