Working in Public Relations means that year on year, we have the opportunity to share a wealth of great news stories across multiple media platforms, which celebrate break-throughs in industry, company growth, award wins, and unique personal achievements to name but a few.

Every year there are a few standout stories that we know we’ll remember for a very long time and which have significant impact on the local, national and sometimes international community.

As far as PR clients go, charities that work to cure children’s cancer are particularly special; the stories generated from the selfless and extraordinary work that they do are often unique and humbling, and we have the pleasure of working on behalf of one such amazing charity.

North of England Children's Cancer Research, or "NECCR", was set up over 30 years ago by a group of parents who, quite rightly, believed that no-one - and certainly not children, should fall victim to cancer.

Sadly, most of these parents had lost a son or daughter to cancer because back then, while treatment was available, there was little to no money available to fund research into both the causes of, and new treatments of the disease in children.

Since the charity began, it's raised funds for the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, (NICR) which is based in Newcastle, with sites at the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Newcastle University. Somewhere near £30m has been raised; enabling ground breaking, and internationally acclaimed research.

In a nutshell, thirty years ago mortality rates among young cancer sufferers stood at a horrifically high rate of 70-80%. However thanks to advances in research and drug therapy the percentages have been almost completely reversed and the survival rate for children and young people diagnosed with cancer is now 80% on average.

As part of PR campaign for the NECCR's main annual fund raising event, The Children's Cancer Run, we recently worked with some researchers at NICR in order to learn all about the phenomenal work they do. The story that we left with was truly groundbreaking.

Researchers at NICR will be leading the UK in an international research consortium made up of 19 countries, which will be the biggest clinical trial of its kind in the world.

Coined 'IntReALL' the trial will establish targeted treatments for relapsed Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia, so that children being suffering from the disease aren't subjected to unnecessary, potentially harmful drugs. 

- Now that short paragraph in no way does justice to what it is the team will actually do, or the length of time they've spent developing and refining the techniques that will be used across the world.

That, on top of the 30 odd years of welly-hoys, fun runs, walks, sponsored pub crawls and anonymous donations all for a charity which has never had any paid officials or compromised it's belief that every single penny raised goes towards researching children's cancer, is really something that makes us proud. And it all happens here in the northeast.

The response to the achievements from NICR from local media was fantastic, you can read the write up in The Journal here.