Professor Jeffrey S Tobias

News of a change of direction for 2007

Fight for life has had a fantastic first 10 years! Our original plan was to raise sufficient funds to lease top class radiotherapy equipment for University College Hospital/The Middlesex, which together with Great Ormond Street Hospital forms Britain’s largest children’s cancer centre. We were also keen to provide additional facilities such as a separate playroom area for the kids, to give them some breathing space whilst waiting for their treatment. Over the past ten years we have achieved so much! With the full support of UCL Hospitals Trust we leased a state-of-the-art Linear Accelerator - the high energy radiotherapy equipment used for treating children’s’ cancers - and provided a really well-equipped and friendly playroom area as well. This was achieved by tremendous hard work and the wonderful support of so many people both within the organisation and also far beyond.

All this has meant that the children under our care have been treated to the very highest standards, and we can now claim in all honesty to be a world-class paediatric cancer treatment centre - second to none. As far as I am aware, there is no other similar facility anywhere in the UK, with such a wide range of expertise and modern equipment.

As a result, many more children are now being referred for treatment at this centre. The other large central London unit at St Bartholomew’s Hospital recently transferred here, so over the past year we have seen a dramatic increase in our throughput, with the paediatric caseload increasing by 30%. In addition, the hospital has publicly put great faith in our department and agreed to the appointment of a second paediatric radiotherapy consultant, who will be joining us this summer - a major step forward. We work very closely with Great Ormond Street Hospital, with several jointly appointed consultants. This has been a long-standing relationship going back several decades, and Great Ormond Street has no radiotherapy facilities of its own.

2005 is a fantastically exciting year for UCH since we will be moving to a purpose-built new hospital just adjacent to our "sister" institution, the world famous UCL, with its outstanding scientific record and science facilities which are among the best in the world. This gives us an increased opportunity for research in many areas of cancer, including of course research into children’s’ cancers, which was previously difficult to pursue.

In order to maintain at the absolute forefront of treatment we also needed to purchase some more expensive equipment, not a treatment unit this time but a new type of scanner which will provide us with much better treatment accuracy for children about to undergo radiotherapy.

The new equipment is a PET/CT fusion scanner, which for the very first time uses technology of unparalleled provision and accuracy. The scientific details are complex but in essence, the PET part of the scanner works by outlining tumour cells because of their greater metabolic activity (as compared with normal cells) and the CT part gives wonderful definition of tissue planes, organs etc. Put the two together and you have what most experts (myself included) regard as unquestionably the future gold-standard, for radiotherapy treatment planning. This allows us to hit the tumour harder with a stronger radiation therapy beam, whilst confidently being able to exclude the normal tissues surrounding the tumour - which previously would have to be treated as well as the primary tumour itself, with much more damaging results for the child and his/her growing tissues.

The move from our old facility at the Middlesex hospital site to the new UCH took place in November 2005 and we have now installed a PET/CT scanner in the Nuclear Medicine Department in the early part of 2007.

Fight for Life has therefore launched a major appeal along with the UCH to fund this exciting new machine which costs in the region of £2,000,000. As a charity, Fight for Life are committed to future leasing costs of at least £150,000 per annum for the next few years. The hospital have put their faith in us since they know that we have been able to deliver in the past (in spades!) with the help of our many supporters, and I am pleased to inform everyone that the one radiotherapy machine felt to be of sufficiently high quality to justify removal from the old Middlesex to the new UCH site will be re-badged as the Fight for Life treatment unit. So this means that in the new department, Fight for Life will be doubly represented both by a major piece of treatment equipment, and also by the new PET/CT scanner.

This is truly an exciting and indeed historic time for us all. The department of oncology has expanded enormously over the past 25 years since I was first appointed on the consultant staff here (that was way back in January 1981, and they invited me to become a Professor at the Medical School in 2001). We have gone from strength to strength. The bottom line is that with your help and the expertise of all our remarkable staff, we now expect to cure (yes cure in the true sense of the word!) over 70% of all children presenting with a newly diagnosed cancer.

What a fantastic achievement - and once again, an opportunity to thank you all most warmly for the part you have played.

Prof Jeffrey S Tobias MD FRCP FRCP
Consultant in Radiotherapy & Oncology & Professor of Cancer Medicine.
Medical Director of Fight for Life

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