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The Rosetrees Trust funds Clinical Research Post

The Rosetrees Trust funds Clinical Research Post

We are pleased to announce that UCL Hospitals Charitable Foundation has been awarded a generous grant over three years from our long-term supporter, the Rosetrees Trust. This wonderful award will cover the salary costs of a new Clinical Research Fellow, Dr. Lukas Kalinke, delivering the world’s first ever Photodynamic ThErApy for the pRevention of Lung cancer (PEARL) Trial. 

The PEARL Trial sets out to prove whether Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) can be a viable preventative treatment for people at high risk of developing lung cancer. The applications of PDT are growing all the time. The PEARL Trial will be the first randomised control trial in the world to use PDT to treat patients with High Grade Lung lesions (HGLs) – lesions which are pre-cancerous but which are considered likely to become malignant (cancerous). 

Our goal is to test the hypothesis and prove that invasive, full-blown lung cancer can be prevented when treated in the earliest stages. One hundred patients will take part and the trial will be considered a success if we can cut by half the existing statistic that 60% of people with HGLs will go on to progress to cancer. Proving that PDT can revolutionise survival rates of lung cancer will also facilitate and enable future research into late stage tumour treatments. We will develop cell lines of HGLs to make it possible to test these treatments in the future. 

This is a pioneering trial – the first ever of its kind in the world. It offers enormous translational and clinical opportunity and has the potential to forever change the landscape of lung cancer – to prevent it from becoming full-blown cancer which kills. And not only will it impact lung cancer – key learnings generated by the study will inform us about other lung malignancies and conditions and play a part in their early detection and prevention. Importantly, it also provides funders with an opportunity to push boundaries and drive major step-change in lung cancer prevention. 

UCL Hospitals Charitable Foundation and the Lungs for Living team are incredibly grateful to the Rosetrees Trust for their generous support.