This year we spoke to researchers Professor Kathy Pritchard-Jones – who has been involved with Young Art for over a decade – and Dr Karin Straathof at the Institute of Child Health – who has taken over the partnership in recent years – about their research and the importance of creativity in the sciences.

Could you tell us about how you first became involved with Young Art?

Karin Straathof: I think Kathy should go first as she started it all!

Kathy Pritchard-Jones: I was approached about 10 years ago and it just seemed like a natural fit. I liked the idea that children are trying to help children with cancer. At the same time, it is exciting for them to enter this art competition. The exhibition, showcasing work from a range of schools is a great opportunity to explain to the children what the money they are raising is used for; often children are not aware that children get cancer until it happens to one of their friends or themselves. So, I think it has a dual purpose.

KS: Kathy has worked with Young Art for many years now. About three years ago I joined this partnership. The Young Art concept is really exciting; it works on so many levels: the children find it really exciting to have their artwork on display while they are also keen to help raise money to make things better for other children who are ill.

What is your specific area of research and how does the money raised by Young Art over the years contribute towards it?

KS: Young Art is supporting research at the Institute of Child Health on new treatments for children with brain tumours. Several childhood brain tumours are very difficult to treat. That is why we are working on a new type of treatment called immunotherapy. The immune system’s day job is to keep us safe from infection; immune cells go around the body scanning to see which cells are healthy and which are infected. If they encounter infected cells, they set in motion a process of clearing those cells up and also protect us from getting ill from the same virus again. However, in childhood cancer, the cancer cells are not that different from healthy cells; they used to be normal cells, but something has gone wrong during development that made a cell become a cancer cell. So, the immune system doesn’t naturally recognise these cancer cells very well because they aren’t that different from normal. However, we now have the technology to genetically engineer immune cells with instructions on how to recognise cancer cells.

KPJ: The research work we do at the Institute of Child Health is very close to the patient (‘translational’). This means we are working towards developing new treatments that are then being used in Great Ormond Street Hospital in the context of a clinical trial which is how you bring new treatments to patients who need them. The immunotherapy approach that Karin describes is already being used in a clinical trial for some types of childhood cancers such as leukaemia and neuroblastoma. In the near future we hope to start a clinical trial for patients with brain tumours too.

Do you think creativity is as important in the sciences as much as in the arts?

KPJ: Science is, of course, a creative discipline, and I think that’s particularly true in research and in medicine. Understanding scientific methods and the approach to defining a problem, designing an experiment to answer that question and then being able to evaluate what you’ve found is a complex process and I think art can really help with visualising not only the problems and the solutions but also the methodology.

KS: The other parallel between the arts and the sciences is using different perspectives. At the Young Art exhibition you can see each child coming up with a different concept in response to a theme, they all have a different idea in their minds. You see that more and more with science as well – the value of different perspectives. In science we work much more in big teams bringing together different expertise and viewpoints to tackle the challenge of effective and kinder treatments for childhood cancer: creative teamwork is really what is needed to move things forward.