NEWS Rockinghorse Children’s Charity is working with the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and Brighton and Sussex Medical School to expand access to the world’s first clinic to treat childhood asthma using innovative precision medicine approaches. More than 1.1 million children in the UK are currently receiving treatment for asthma. The condition is usually treated with inhalers, but until recently, this has been generally untargeted, with similar approaches being used regardless of the child’s individual characteristics or environment. This ‘one size fits all’ approach may mean that some children don’t respond to treatments in the most effective way. When this happens, it can be difficult to know why the same treatments do not work in the same way for every child. However, this research has found that there are ways to help target the exact type of treatment that’s right for each individual child. Rockinghorse Children’s Charity has previously funded some initial research by Professor Somnath Mukhopadhyay and his team at Brighton and Sussex Medical Rockinghorse Children’s Charity is expanding access to the world’s first clinic for treating childhood asthma using innovative precision medicine approaches. School, which developed the personalised approach to treatment based on the genotype of the individual child. This led to the development of a specialist pilot clinic at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, using this approach to find the best way to treat children with asthma. Professor Mukhopadhyay said, “Rockinghorse’s funding has been very important in supporting the first ever role out of a personalised medicine led clinic in children’s asthma. We hope this will lead to information that can encourage the NHS to consider adopting these practices nationwide.” Testing a child to determine their genetic makeup can reveal what medications won’t work for them and, crucially, the ones that will. This means that each child has a better chance of receiving more appropriate treatments for their condition. This work has resulted in interest at the national level. The NHS is currently discussing how we can study costeffectiveness, with the aim of making these treatments accessible for children more widely across the UK. Anyone who has experienced asthma, whether as an adult or a child, will understand the impact it can have on many aspects of life. It can stop them from playing sports, having a pet, or even doing simple things like walking to school or climbing the stairs. These new treatments for severely affected children have proved life-changing. One child who previously struggled with controlling his asthma reported his breathing capacity to have transformed virtually overnight after receiving genotype-directed personalised treatment. Similar improvements have also been reported by other children receiving personalised care. The research has also been used to create a shift in awareness of these new treatment options. This is now improving clinical practice, informing General Practitioner training in the UK, and is formalised within international treatment guidelines in Australia. However, despite the success of this initial work, the option to receive personalised
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