Clear Cell Sarcoma Research Programme in Partnership with the Cancer Institute at UCL – Update

The Edward Showler Foundation was set up to remember Ed and in order to promote the awareness of and research into Sarcoma. At that time we had little expectation that we could promote research specifically into Clear Cell Sarcoma but 4 years on we have now signed an agreement with the Cancer Institute at University College London to partner them in undertaking “The Edward Showler Foundation Clear Cell Sarcoma Research Programme”. 

Because CCS is so rare, it has been little studied to date and a detailed understanding of the drivers of disease and reasons for treatment resistance is sorely lacking. The aim of this project is to build that thorough better understanding of the disease, with the hope that this will lead to the development of novel therapeutics and better targeting of existing treatments in the future. The Foundation believes this is a key starting point towards a cure for CCS and will be a catalyst for further translational research around the world. All data generated will be made openly available to researchers and clinicians internationally, to complement and support other research programs into CCS and other sarcomas across the global research community.

The programme will be over a 4-year period and employ genomic sequencing to look at the causes and drivers of Clear Cell Sarcoma and will use Clear Cell Sarcoma tissue samples, stored at the bio-bank held at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, together with samples from other sarcoma centres around the UK. 

The cost of the programme is £541,000 and to date the Foundation have raised £480,000 towards this total.

As a consequence we have re-set our original target to raise £500,000 to £1,000,000.

Amongst other things these additional funds will enable the research programme to be extended to allow cutting edge single cell DNA and RNA sequencing of Clear Cell Sarcoma tissue samples to be undertaken at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge to supplement the main research programme.

This potentially ground breaking research will be headed up by Dr Nischalan Pillay and his team in a world class medical establishment in London, where Ed was working at the time of his diagnosis.