Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to support research into neuroblastoma.

The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is supporting neuroblastoma research through NIHR biomedical research centres, the NIHR clinical research facility at the Royal Marsden Hospital, Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (funded jointly with Cancer Research UK) and the NIHR Clinical Research Network. A study of re-purposing of 13-cis-retinoic acid for use in treating children with neuroblastoma has recently been approved for funding through the Health Innovation Challenge Fund. This is a fund jointly supported by the Department and the Wellcome Trust.