CHILDREN with cancer could be spared debilitating chemotherapy treatment after North-East scientists made an important brain cancer discovery.

Until now, every child with a brain tumour, known as medulloblastoma, has been given the same intensive treatment.

For the 60 per cent of children who survive, the treatment can have a number of drastic side-effects.

But the discovery by a team of Newcastle University scientists of a way of identifying children with a more treatable form of the disease means doctors will be able to treat youngsters in this group more effectively.

It will also allow experts to focus their efforts on children with the more serious form of the illness.

The scientists have found that, in youngsters who have the more treatable form of medulloblastoma, a particular protein can be detected.

The same protein is not produced in the brains of children who require the more difficult treatment.

Until now, cancer specialists had no way of telling which youngsters needed more aggressive treatment.

There are hopes that the discovery could lead to more lives being saved.

The development has been welcomed by Neil Dickson, whose 16-year-old daughter, Samantha, died from a brain tumour nine years ago.

Mr Dickson, whose Hampshire-based charity, The Samantha Dickson Research Trust, helped fund the Newcastle research along with Cancer Research UK, said: "We are delighted that this significant finding offers the potential for improved quality of life and survival times for sufferers."

The Newcastle researchers, who are members of the United Kingdom Children's Cancer Study Group, studied the tumour cells of 109 patients with medulloblastoma.

The results, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology last night, revealed that 25 per cent of the tumours activated a protein called Beta-catenin.

The 27 patients who had the protein had a survival rate of nearly 93 per cent, compared with 65 per cent for patients without it.

The researchers believe that patients with the protein have a milder form of the disease, and could be spared unnecessary treatment.

This could reduce the impact of side-effects such as impairment of learning or normal growth.

It also means that, for children with more aggressive tumours, more intensive therapies could be tried at an earlier stage to improve the patient's chances of survival.

Professor David Ellison, from the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, said: "We hope this discovery will make a crucial difference for patients having treatment for this type of brain tumour in the future."