Scientists to launch new investigations into common cancers

researchers in Yorkshire are set to investigate cancer cells’ resistance to therapies in two new studies.

The one-year projects funded by the charity Yorkshire Cancer Research will concentrate on breast cancer, which is the most common cancer in the UK, and ovarian cancer, the fifth most common in women.

Both are designed to capture key information in preparation for further work.

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James Thorne, based at the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, will test whether giving an additional drug in combination with chemotherapy will improve outcomes for breast cancer which claims the lives of 10,000 women in the UK each year.

“There is currently a major gap in our understanding of how some breast cancers are resistant to chemotherapy while others respond well,” he said.

“Resistance to chemotherapy significantly hinders treatment of certain forms of breast cancer and predicting this, and finding alternative treatments, will enhance survival rates.

“We have identified an action within cancer cells that if blocked may prevent tumours escaping the effects of chemotherapy.

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“Drugs that target this action have already been developed, so we will test whether these drugs will increase the efficiency of traditional chemotherapy and could therefore be used in combination with chemotherapy to improve cancer outcomes.”

William English, based at the Sheffield Cancer Research Centre at Sheffield University, will investigate which ovarian cancer patients are more likely to respond to drugs known as anti-vascular therapies, which restrict the blood supply to tumours, starving them of nutrients they need to grow.

He said: “Ovarian cancer is the biggest cause of death from gynaecological disease.

“We need ways of identifying patients who are most likely to respond to anti-vascular therapies.”

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Tumours had been identified that might respond best to the therapy but work needed to be done to find out how cancer cells resisted therapies and identify signs of resistance which could be used by doctors in clinics.