LONDON, November 2, 2026 — Blood Cancer UK is launching a £25 million appeal to fund a programme called Trial Treat Beat, which aims to double survival rates for some of the deadliest blood cancers by testing several treatments at once rather than one after another. The charity says the diseases it targets currently leave only one in three patients alive.
Stark Numbers Behind the Appeal
The launch follows a charity-funded analysis of more than 413,000 blood cancer cases. It found that five-year survival for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), one of the deadliest forms of leukaemia, rose from 21 percent to 24 percent in England between 2009-14 and 2015-19. Scotland and Wales showed similarly limited progress.
That three-point gain over a decade stands out against the wider picture, with overall cancer survival in the UK reaching record highs. Blood cancer is Britain’s third biggest cancer killer and its fifth most common cancer.
“The figures are really stark,” Helen Rowntree, chief executive of Blood Cancer UK, told LBC. “Most crucially, behind all of those statistics, there are lots of people who are facing a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukaemia and living with that against a backdrop of improvements in other cancers.”
To mark Monday’s launch, hundreds of chairs were placed in central London, with two in every three left empty to represent patients who do not survive. At an installation in Victoria Tower Gardens, 99 chairs were set out with only one in three occupied.
Borrowing From Prostate Cancer
The programme draws on Stampede, a prostate cancer trial that tested multiple treatments within a single programme and changed care worldwide. Blood Cancer UK says that trial is thought to have saved more than 50,000 lives in the UK since it began.
Trial Treat Beat will use multi-arm multi-stage trials, known as Mams, which the charity describes as the country’s first use of the approach for these types of blood cancer. The design lets researchers test several treatment approaches concurrently and abandon ineffective options early, moving promising therapies forward faster.
The charity is candid that the work is ambitious and complex, requiring substantial funding and collaboration between researchers and hospitals to run at scale. Its ambition is to fund three large-scale trials covering high-risk myeloma, the most aggressive lymphomas and AML.
“These can be incredibly difficult diseases to treat, and we need to find effective new treatments, faster,” said Dr Rubina Ahmed, the charity’s director of research. She said the programme would help researchers identify effective treatments and focus efforts where they could make the greatest difference to patients.
Getting Treatments Into the NHS
Rowntree framed the goal in practical terms: changing how NHS care is delivered, not only publishing results. “Research is great, but what we want to do is make sure that it makes it into the NHS so that it means that the way in which people are treated can change and improve,” she said.
She said the organisation is looking ahead to the point when the first patient receives a new treatment they would not otherwise have had through the NHS. “We’re absolutely looking forward, but the job’s not done. This is really the start of that journey for us.”
For patients and families reading the survival figures, Rowntree offered a caution that sits at the heart of how such data should be read. “It’s really important for people to understand that their prognosis is personal and that these numbers reflect population-level data,” she said, adding that anyone concerned about their own diagnosis should speak with their treating team, who know them best. The charity also runs a nurse team available to talk through questions about blood cancer.
A Family’s Loss, and a Reason to Push
Lee Williams, who lost his mother, another relative and a friend to blood cancer in little more than a year, is among those backing the appeal. “It’s impossible to describe what it feels like to lose a parent,” he said. “The speed at which the tide turned on Mum and our family was crippling.”
He said he supports Trial Treat Beat because he does not want other families to go through what his did. “We need to keep pushing for better treatments, better survival rates and, one day, a cure.”
The early findings suggest the Mams model can compress years of separate studies into one coordinated effort, though the survival benefit for these blood cancers will only be known once the trials report. Patients should continue to discuss their own care with their doctor or oncologist, and anyone with questions about blood cancer can contact the charity’s nurses. The appeal is open now, with the first trial results expected only after the programme is funded and recruitment begins.
Sources
- Scientists hope to double leukaemia survival rates with new trial method
- Scientists hoping to double leukaemia survival rates with new £25mil appeal | LBC
- Scientists hoping to double leukaemia survival rates with new £25mil appeal
Photo: Gerald England (CC BY-SA 2.0)
