SCOTLAND TO LEAD NEW INTERNATIONAL CANCER “SUPERGROUP”
Cancer Research UK and partners today committed £5.5m to form a world-leading research team tasked with making personalised medicine a reality for people with bowel cancer.
Led by Scottish scientists, the CRC-STARS initiative (Colorectal Cancer — Stratification of Therapies through Adaptive Responses), will bring together more than 40 bowel cancer experts to find new and kinder ways to tackle a cancer increasingly being diagnosed in younger people.
Bowel cancer kills 16,800 people in the UK (1,700 in Scotland) every year and is increasingly being diagnosed in younger people.*A recent study by the American Cancer Society published in The Lancet Oncology showed early-onset bowel cancer rates in adults aged 25-49 are rising in 27 of 50 countries studied and are rising faster in young women in Scotland and England than in young men.**
Harnessing the expertise of researchers at universities and institutes across the UK, Spain, Italy and Belgium, the five-year project will aim to better understand how different bowel cancers respond to current treatments, why certain bowel cancers spread, and whether scientists can predict which treatments will work for individual patients.
Led by Professor Owen Sansom of the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute in Glasgow and University of Glasgow, along with co-leads Professor Jenny Seligmann of the University of Leeds and Professor Simon Leedham of the University of Oxford, this personalised medicine approach will see detailed information about an individual’s cancer – not just the area of the body where the cancer started – used to help inform decisions on diagnosis and treatment.
Personalised medicine is a growing area of cancer care and research.
Director of the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute and CRC-STARS co-lead, Professor Owen Sansom, said: “With more and more younger people being diagnosed with bowel cancer, it’s vital we remain vigilant and keep trying to understand new causes and new reasons for cancer.
“Step by step, day by day, we’re discovering new ways to prevent, detect and treat bowel cancer and save lives, but there’s more to discover, and this new support from our funders will allow us to take bold steps towards better understanding bowel cancer and how to beat it.”
Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in the UK.*** Despite this, treatment options remain limited, particularly for patients who are diagnosed at later stages of the disease. Scotland is disproportionately affected by the disease with around 4,000 people being diagnosed each year.
First Minister John Swinney, who visited the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute today (Monday 31 March), said: “I very much welcome this multi-national research project and hope it will lead to more personalised care for people with bowel cancer. The fact it is being co-led by scientists in Glasgow is recognition of the expertise we have here in Scotland.
“With studies suggesting bowel cancer diagnoses rates are increasing for younger adults, it is vitally important to support research that will improve our understanding of how the disease progresses and develop new approaches to its treatment.”
Rectal cancer survivor Tracy Farrell, 53, from Glasgow welcomed the new investment into colorectal cancer. The fire service cook from Balornock was diagnosed aged 50 after seeing blood in her poo after going to the toilet.
She said: “It was the first time I’d had blood, I had no symptoms, no pain and my GP said because I was so young and had no family history of bowel cancer then she hoped it wouldn’t be that.
“There were no red flags for me so I was considered low priority but they were able to get me a colonoscopy within just three weeks due to a cancellation.
“They told me that day I had a tumour. I went from one day having nothing to the next day having cancer. I couldn’t even bring myself to say I had cancer. It was such a shock.
“At the time I was looking after my 14-year-old nephew Reece because his mother, my sister, had died from an aneurysm and I just thought he can’t lose me as well. He was like the baby I never had.”
Tracy was given chemotherapy and radiotherapy to shrink the tumour and the treatment worked so well she didn’t need surgery and now has been cancer free for three years.
She said: “I was lucky the cancer hadn’t spread and that it was caught early.”
With the support of her mum Kathleen, great friends and firefighter colleagues, Tracy is now doing well and nephew Reece is 18 and at college.
She took part in a research project by offering samples for scientists to study.
She said: “I found it a great help. It allowed me to have extra scans so we could see the treatment was working.
“But taking part in the study was amazing – to know you are helping them find out more about this disease so they can find new ways to tackle it feels very rewarding.”
The team will work on combining experimental, pre-clinical and clinical data to predict cancer progression and tailor new therapeutic approaches specific to each patient’s characteristics. It is hoped this work will the development of drug resistance and improve the response to treatments, such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy, hopefully improving outcomes for patients.
Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, Michelle Mitchell, said: “For more than 100 years, Cancer Research UK-funded scientists have been working to beat bowel cancer, and this project is one of the most comprehensive for bowel cancer that we have ever supported.
“Together with our funding partners – the Bowelbabe Fund, Bjorn and Inger Saven and the FCAECC – we can empower the CRC-STARS team to speed up the development of personalised treatment for people living with bowel cancer, bringing us closer to a world where people live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.”
The team will also build on the tools, resources and discoveries developed by existing bowel cancer research collaborations (e.g. ACRCelerate) and Cancer Research UK’s National Biomarker Centre and analyse data from Cancer Research UK-supported colorectal cancer studies such as the FOxTROT, TREC and PRIME-RT clinical trials.***
Scientific Director at the FCAECC, Dr Marta Puyol, said: “This project will not only help us to better understand the landscape of bowel cancer in a collaborative and multidisciplinary manner but will also allow us to place a strong emphasis on patient needs, accelerating the translation of results into clinical practice.”
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