Cancer

While pain can be a huge part of the journey for young people with cancer, there is limited data available to help us understand their pain and set appropriate guidelines for managing it.

For children, pain can result from several factors, including the routine physical interventions of cancer management and treatments themselves. Stress is also known to enhance pain, where repeated hospital visits can certainly contribute to the overall distress and pain experienced by children and young people. Unfortunately, it is impossible to understand the extent to which cancer management impacts pain, while active cancer - that could be a key source of pain itself - is being treated.

In collaboration with paediatric pain specialists, paediatric oncologists and medical physicists, Dr Sandrine Géranton from University College London is working to strengthen our understanding of pain in children with cancer.

Her team are looking at two main approaches; investigating the impact of treatment and stress on young cancer survivors by engaging directly with their families, and studying laboratory mice to investigate the impact of cancer management alone on pain. This is a unique programme of work that ties together basic and clinical research, with the potential to rapidly inform clinical practice in this field.