Our Mission
Cure childhood cancer.
aPODD is a registered charity focused on drug development for treating childhood cancer, an area that is largely ignored by the pharmaceutical industry. Our mission is to find better and kinder treatments for children with cancer as quickly as possible. We believe every child who beats cancer should be able to fulfil their potential without the worry of falling ill again.
Currently two thirds of children who survive childhood cancer will experience long term health complications, including hearing loss, heart disease, sight loss and even secondary cancer, caused by the toxicity of the current treatments.
At aPODD we focus on one thing, finding new cures for as many childhood cancers as we can. While some charities spread their funds between research, raising awareness and offering support. We do not.
What makes aPODD different:
We don’t fund research into basic science – there’s lots of charities already doing brilliant work in this area.
We focus on drug repurposing projects – every approved drug on the market has many uses other than what it was originally intended. Our research focuses on identifying which drugs can also treat childhood cancer.
We manage our own research projects as this allows us greater control and enables us to deliver our projects cheaper and quicker than traditional medical research projects.
We don’t spend our money on raising awareness or organising support projects – it’s not our expertise, and we want to focus on what we do best, finding new treatments.
We want to see changes in the regulatory system and get children access to new drugs faster. We are part of a European working group, lobbying to allow adolescents to join adult clinical trials. The ACCELERATE-platform has been created to improve global development of new paediatric oncology drugs.
Cesare Spadoni, PhD
Chair of Trustees, Founder