AN elite team of North-East scientists has made a breakthrough in child cancer care.

The group's findings could result in more effective drugs and a much higher cure rate for childhood cancers.

The team, part of the Northern Institute for Cancer Research at Newcastle University, has discovered genetic clues as to why some children do well on chemotherapy while others fail to respond.

Up to now cancer researchers have tended to concentrate on the genetic make-up of tumours. But the specialist pharmacology team - one of only a handful in the world - has concentrated on the interaction between cancer drugs and the patient's genetic make-up.

If researchers can now work out precisely why individual children react in different ways to the same drug, they could be on the way to more effective treatment.

"It is very exciting, it could have a lot of potential for the future," said Professor Andrew Pearson, a child cancer specialist at Newcastle University and co-author of the report.

The trial involved 36 children, aged between two and 16, diagnosed with a particular form of childhood cancer known as B cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The findings show that treatment - using an established cancer drug called Cyclophosphamide - was more successful in children whose bodies were able to break down the drug and absorb the active ingredients into their system.

Prof Pearson said the next step was to attract funding to mount a larger study. "We desperately need to know exactly what makes a child react well to chemotherapy while another does not respond," he said.

Dr Alan Boddy, a Cancer Research UK scientist at Newcastle University and co-author of the study, said: "This study provides an important step forward on our journey to understand how anti-cancer drugs work in children. It may also widen our knowledge of how the same drug works in adult cancers."