EU rules "mean children can't get life-saving cancer drugs"

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EU rules "mean children can't get life-saving cancer drugs"

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Children with cancer are being denied access to potentially life-saving medicines because European Union rules allow drug firms to waive the need to test some drugs in pediatric trials, researchers said on Monday. Calling for a loophole in EU legislation to be closed, scientists and specialists in childhood oncology led by Britain's Institute for Cancer Research (ICR) said changing the rules could extend or save many young lives. "Many cancer drugs developed for adults could be effective in children if we were able to test them in clinical trials," Louis Chesler, an ICR researcher and a pediatric oncologist at London's Royal Marsden hospital, told reporters at a briefing. Currently, pharmaceutical companies developing new cancer medicines can gain exemptions from carrying out expensive testing of those drugs in patients under age 18, even where a drug's mechanism of action suggests it could work in children.

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