Conventional treatments for cancer are surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy and this has remained largely unchanged for decades. For some cancers these treatments are effective but for many they are not.

Whilst the effectiveness of these treatments is not always effective, there are countless stories of people who have used so-called “alternative” treatments and have experienced reduction if not disappearance of their cancers.

However, the vast majority of people are still only offered conventional treatment options by their medical team – this can give cancer sufferers the impression that these alternative treatments are not even worth looking into since ‘if it was effective it would be prescribed by our doctor’.

The fact is that doctors cannot recommend anything that hasn’t gone though clinical trials.

This puts those people experiencing a cancer diagnosis in a very difficult position since, especially if there is a constraint in pursuing an alternative treatment, they often don’t know what to do for the best.

Even if there is scientific evidence showing that an alternative treatment is effective on cancer, the clinical trial needs to have been carried out on a particular cancer type in order for it to be prescribed for use on that particular cancer type.

Alternative Cancer Research (ALTCR) was set up with the aim of funding research projects into alternative treatments by respected institutions in order for them to undergo clinical trials.

Since an alternative treatment will need to be proved on a particular type of cancer first, we have decided to initially focus on the tumour type with which we are most familiar – paediatric anaplastic ependymoma (a relatively common but aggressive form of childhood brain tumour), although this focus will soon move onto alternative treatments which show the most potential.

See www.altcr.com for more information