Yesterday
Collaboration: the key to success An enduring problem was that no single hospital saw more than a handful of children with any one type of cancer. The resulting variability in how different local and specialist hospitals treated their patients meant it was almost impossible to gather meaningful evidence and test new therapies rigorously. Dr Hardisty led the first national cancer studies, funded by the Medical Research Council. These trialled a new treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), a common form of childhood cancer. By delivering radiotherapy early to the brain and spine, the trial showed it was possible to kill ‘hidden’ leukaemia cells in the cerebrospinal fluid, stopping the cancer from coming back in a significant number of patients.
as lead clinical consultant. Along with Dr Jon Pritchard, Dr Chessells helped to set up the UK Children’s Cancer Study Group in 1977. Medical teams around the UK could now pool ideas and standardise the way patients were given experimental treatments. Dr Pritchard transformed the way chemotherapy was used to treat childhood cancers like liver tumours and neuroblastoma, introducing the now widely used drug Cisplatin into treatment regimes. At the beginning of his career, the overall prospect of survival in childhood cancers was 30%. Now it is more than 75%.
Right: The hospital’s first cancer consultants, Dr Judith Chessells (middle) and Dr Jon
In 1973, GOSH opened a specialist fivebed cancer unit, with Dr Judith Chessells
Pritchard (right), with fellow haematologist and oncologist, Dr Ian Hann.
1973 Dedicated cancer inpatient unit established at Great Ormond Street Hospital. 1977 Hospital consultants set up the first UK-wide Children’s Cancer Study Group to promote research 16
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