Improved treatments for chronic myeloid leukaemia have dramatically increased survival

Wednesday 12 December 2012

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Survival for people diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML) has risen by nearly half, with around 58 per cent of people surviving their disease for at least five years compared with only around 40 per cent in the late 1990s, according to a new report from the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN), published today.

The improvements are largely down to a family of drugs called Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (TKIs) which have now become the standard treatment for the disease. The first of these was imatinib (Glivec), which was licensed in 2001.

The Northern and Yorkshire Cancer Registry and Information Service (NYCRIS), on behalf of the NCIN Haematology Site Specific Clinical Reference Group (SSCRG), looked at the rates of people in England getting, dying from and surviving a range of different blood cancers between 1995 and 2008. And it is the first national study in England to look at survival for different types of leukaemia.

For patients diagnosed with CML, researchers found that the chance of surviving the disease for at least five years after diagnosis rose from 41 per cent to 57 per cent in men and from 38 per cent to 59 per cent in women between the late 1990s and the early 2000s1.

CML is a relatively rare form of leukaemia2 that mostly affects older people, with around 700 cases diagnosed in the UK every year3.

Dr Robin Ireland, chair of the SSCRG at the NCIN, said: “It’s really exciting to see the enormous difference new drugs can make in treating cancer. And, as this new data shows, TKI’s can be considered a revolutionary treatment for Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia.  

“Basic research has given us a greater biological understanding of cancer tumours, which has led to the development of successful targeted cancer drugs that are now the first line treatment for CML. TKIs target cancer cells by blocking the molecules they make, which stops them from multiplying. These drugs have completely changed the outlook for patients with this disease and it’s the first example of our improved understanding of cell molecular biology leading to the design of a specific inhibitor of the disease.”

Dr Steven Oliver, Haematological Cancer Epidemiology Lead at NYCRIS and lead author of the report, said: “This report shows that, although the number of people developing Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia hasn’t changed much since 2001, survival from the disease has greatly improved.

“What’s even more promising is that, in the last four years, second and third generations of these drugs have been developed. We believe more and more CML patients have been receiving TKI’s and we’d predict that the improvements in survival should be even greater in the future.”

Chris Carrigan, head of the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN), said: “Being able to link data on the diagnosis, treatment and outcomes for cancer patients allows us to identify where improved cancer care is having an effect on peoples lives. The improvements in survival demonstrated here highlight the difference that effective treatments can make.”

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More than 33,000 childhood cancer survivors living in the UK

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Cancer Research UK Press Release

An estimated 33,000 long-term survivors of childhood cancer - the vast majority of whom are cured - will be living in the UK by the end of 20121, according to new figures from Cancer Research UK.

The news underlines the tremendous progress that has been made in the fight against children’s cancer over the past 50 years.

In the late 1960s fewer than three in 10 children survived their disease for at least five years. Today that figure has risen to almost eight in 102. But, there is still a need for better treatments to help more of the 1,600 children diagnosed with cancer each year in the UK survive the disease.

The assessment comes as Cancer Research UK launches its annual Little Stars Awards, in partnership with brands-for-less retailer TK Maxx, to recognise the bravery of children who have undergone cancer treatment.

Some types of childhood cancer have seen huge improvements thanks to research into new treatments.

For leukaemia, the most commonly diagnosed cancer in children, clinical trials have been at the heart of this progress. In the 1960s, there were very few treatments available for the disease but, since the 1970s, trials have tested the use of chemotherapy and other treatments. This has led to more than 80 per cent of children surviving their disease for five years or more.

The most common childhood liver cancer – hepatoblastoma - has also seen five year survival rates quadruple from around 20 per cent in the late 1970s to around 80 per cent today. Early trials focused on offering children new combinations of chemotherapy to treat the disease and, more recently, trials have looked at maintaining these improvements in survival rates while reducing the side-effects.

Professor Josef Vormoor, a Cancer Research UK childhood leukaemia expert in Newcastle, said: “What we’ve achieved for some childhood cancers, such as leukaemia, over the last 30 years has been fantastic. This has been thanks to researchers and doctors working together to trial new and improved treatments that offer children and their family’s new hope of beating the disease.

“But, we urgently need better treatments for those children we can’t cure yet, particularly for those with cancers such as neuroblastoma and some types of brain tumours. And, for cancers where treatments are successful we need more targeted drugs so that the children we treat can live full lives without any long term side effects.”

To help more children survive cancer in the future Cancer Research UK is funding a range of trials and research projects.

In neuroblastoma, where 64 per cent of children survive their disease for five years or more, a pioneering therapy called immunotherapy is now being offered to children. This treatment uses the body’s immune system to attack the cancer and recently a new trial was opened to offer this treatment to children with neuroblastoma that has returned who currently have few treatments available.

For a type of bone tumour called Ewing’s sarcoma, where 64 per cent of children survive their disease for five years or more, Cancer Research UK is funding a trial that will test a combination of chemotherapy drugs to see if they are more effective and have fewer side effects than the standard treatments currently used.   

Cancer Research UK’s Little Star Awards, in partnership with TK Maxx, recognise the bravery and courage of children who confront cancer. Every child nominated receives the accolade in the form of a trophy and certificate signed by celebrities.

TK Maxx has supported Little Stars since 2008. To date they have raised a staggering £9 million to help beat children’s cancers.

Eight-year old Amarvir Chatha, from Ilford, Essex, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in September 2010 and was so ill at one point it was touch and go whether he would survive.

Amarvir’s mother Nikki, pictured below, said: “We couldn’t believe it when we first heard Amarvir had leukaemia – those first 24 hours were the longest of our lives. But, thankfully he slowly responded well to the treatment and pulled through.”

Amarvir has now finished his intensive treatment and is on maintenance treatment until January 2014. Earlier this year Amarvir received a Little Star Award.

Nikki added: “We came so close to losing Amarvir and we’ll never forget that, we never take life for granted anymore.  We owe his survival to the incredible advances that have been made in children’s cancer research.”

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said: “Despite improvements in treatment, around 250 children still lose their lives to the disease each year in the UK. As a major funder of research into childhood cancers in the UK, Cancer Research UK is working towards a future where all children are cured of cancer. We’re funding a range of trials to develop new treatments for cancers where we currently have few treatment options, such as aggressive neuroblastoma, and we hope these efforts will mean there are even more childhood cancer survivors in the UK in the years to come.”

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Differences in treatment for advanced ovarian cancer could explain why UK survival lags behind other countries

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Cancer Research UK Press Release

The main reason women are less likely to survive ovarian cancer in the UK than in other comparable countries appears to be due to very low survival in those with more advanced stages of the disease, shows new research published in the journal Gynecologic Oncology.

This research is part of the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP) - a unique global collaboration funded by the Department of Health.

Overall, the UK had similar proportions of women diagnosed at each stage of the disease as in the other participating countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark and Norway). This indicates that differences in access to treatment, or in the quality of care, could play the largest role in the UK’s lower survival for ovarian cancer, along with other factors such as having another illness which may prevent some women from receiving or completing a specific treatment.

Researchers from Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Survival Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined the records of 20,073 women diagnosed with ovarian cancer between 2004 and 2007 to see how many survived for at least one year, and how this compared with the other four countries.

They found that in the UK, 69 per cent survived for at least a year compared to 72 per cent in Denmark and 74-75 per cent in Australia, Canada and Norway.

Survival in the UK was lower among women whose ovarian cancer was diagnosed at a late stage, and for those whose disease stage had not been recorded. This difference for late-stage cancer was greatest for women diagnosed at age 70 years or more, among whom just 35 per cent survived for at least a year, compared to 45 per cent in Canada.

The UK was also much worse at actually recording the stage at diagnosis.

Dr Bernard Rachet, lead author from the Cancer Survival Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “Our research is the first population-based study to examine whether low ovarian cancer survival in the UK is due to more women being diagnosed with advanced disease, or to the outcome of treatment in the UK being inferior at each stage. The results show that the proportion of women with advanced disease is similar to that in other countries, but that survival for women with advanced disease is much lower. This suggests that the success of treatment is lower in the UK, and more effort should be made to ensure that UK women with ovarian cancer have the same access to the best treatments.”

Dr John Butler, study author and Cancer Research UK clinical advisor for the ICBP project from the Royal Marsden Hospital, said: “Ovarian cancer can be very difficult to treat, because it’s not just one disease but several different diseases, depending on the type of the tumour. The most common form, high grade serous ovarian cancer, is thought to develop in the fallopian tube, rather than the ovary, and it often spreads rapidly before a woman notices any symptoms. This is why many ovarian cancers are not detected until they are more advanced. But in order for us to understand why we have lower ovarian cancer survival and how we can focus on improving treatment for later stage disease, the UK must get better at recording the stage of disease at diagnosis.”

Sara Hiom, director of information at Cancer Research UK, said: “This disturbing research advances our knowledge about what needs to be done to tackle lower ovarian cancer survival in the UK. The results show that achieving earlier diagnosis remains vital for improving overall survival. If women are diagnosed when the cancer is still in its early stages, before it has spread to other parts of the body, it is far more likely that treatment will be successful. In addition treatment must be improved for advanced stage cancers.”

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Boost in childhood cancer survival rates 'due to clinical trials'

Wednesday 18 July 2012

The recent increase in survival for children with cancer is due to more patients taking part in clinical trials, according a British study.

But the authors warn that future improvements could be at risk if European trial regulations are not simplified.

The study, published in the journal Annals of Oncology, found that the sharp increase was linked to the establishment of the UK Children's Cancer Study Group (UKCCSG - now the Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group) in 1977, which aimed to set up a portfolio of national and international trials for the majority of children's cancers.

The greatest improvements were seen in children with germ cell tumours (a form of cancer that develops in the testes and ovaries) and hepatoblastoma, a rare liver tumour.

While just over in one in four (28 per cent) of young patients diagnosed with cancer between 1966 and 1970 survived for five years, the figure had risen to nearly four in five (79 per cent) by 2005.

Between 1978 and 2005 two-thirds of children diagnosed with cancer in Britain had a cancer type for which there was an open national or international clinical trial.

Study author Charles Stiller, from the University of Oxford's Childhood Cancer Research Group, said: "The results of our study show that improvements in childhood cancer survival match those reported by the relevant clinical trials that were running between 1978 and 2005.

"During this time there has been an increasing number of patients in trials, with around 90 per cent of all children with many types of cancer enrolled, and this has been made possible by specialist children's cancer units."

He said that although trends in childhood cancer survival had been reported in relation to improvements in treatment in the UK, this was the first time that population-based survival had been looked at in relation to available clinical trials at the time.

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, welcomed the research.

"This study shows that the huge improvements in survival following cancers in childhood have come directly from the clinical trials that have been carried out," he said.

"But it is vital that we continue this work, and that the systems in place for the organisation and regulation of trials do not slow up the progress we are making."

The European Commission this week announced a review of the European Clinical Trials Directive, a move "strongly welcomed" by a Cancer Research UK spokesperson.

Emma Greenwood, the charity's policy manager, said: "We've been working closely with the European Commission throughout the consultation process, and we're pleased to see that many areas we were concerned with look to have been addressed.

"We hope the proposed changes will make it easier for cancer patients and the public to take part in world-class research throughout the UK and Europe. We'll now be working closely with our researchers and other organisations to take a closer look at the revisions to ensure the proposals are as helpful as possible and taken forward quickly."

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Multidisciplinary teams improve survival rates

Monday 18 June 2012

Survival rates for women who have undergone surgery for breast cancer are improved if decisions are made as part of a healthcare team rather an individual doctor, according to a new study.

The research from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, published in the BMJ, shows decision-making by teams made up of surgeons, cancer physicians and nurses is likely to improve survival following surgery for breast cancer.

The health board said that before the introduction of multi-disciplinary care in 1995, breast cancer mortality was 11 per cent higher than in the surrounding west of Scotland health board areas.

Eileen Kesso, project manager, carried out the study and found survival was 18 per cent higher in patients managed in Glasgow when decisions about their care were made by a group rather than an individual doctor.

She said: "Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) were introduced in Greater Glasgow Health Board in the mid-1990s, several years before the rest of the UK.

"They marked a new development in the delivery of cancer services but until now there has not been any strong evidence that they made any difference to patients' survival."

The study, carried out at the West of Scotland Cancer Surveillance Unit, compared breast cancer survival in the greater Glasgow area to the rest of the west of Scotland.

It found survival was poorer in Glasgow in the early 1990s but after team decision-making through MDTs were introduced in 1995, survival was nearly 20 per cent higher in Glasgow compared with other areas.

The teams, comprising a range of specialists, use evidence-based guidelines, audit their performance and meet regularly to discuss how patients should be treated.

The study found survival from breast cancer improved in all areas throughout the 1990s but it improved even more in Glasgow after team decision-making was introduced.

Chief Medical Officer Sir Harry Burns is co-author of the report and as director of public health in Glasgow in the 1990s he was involved in establishing MDTs.

Sir Harry said: "We looked at the way the surgeon with the best survival in Glasgow worked in a team with his clinical and nursing colleagues, and modelled care for the whole health board on his approach.

"We are pleased these findings confirm our belief that this is the best way to deliver breast cancer care.

"I'm also pleased to report that this is the way in which all breast cancer care is now delivered in Scotland and other parts of the UK."

But Sarah Woolnough, Cancer Research UK's director of policy, said the Government needed to make sure all patients received the best possible care.

"This study highlights how properly delivered cancer care can really improve things for patients. Multidisciplinary teams were brought in as the 'gold standard' of cancer care in the 1990s and have helped the UK begin to catch up with the best in Europe in terms of cancer outcomes," she said.

"But we know that not all hospitals are offering the same standard of multidisciplinary care to all patients, so we need to make sure best practice is shared around the NHS."

She also highlighted the impact of the forthcoming changes to the NHS in England.

"We need to keep monitoring things, to ensure that the imminent NHS restructure is seen as an opportunity to reinforce this way of caring for patients in all regions," she added.

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Longer cancer survival means nearly half of cancer patients die from other diseases

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Improved cancer survival rates mean that up to half of people diagnosed with cancer actually die from other diseases, according to US research.

A study of 1,807 cancer survivors showed that a large proportion of the people had conditions like heart disease and diabetes in addition to their cancer.

Over 18 years, 776 of the study participants died. But while 51 per cent of these people died as a result of cancer recurrences, 49 per cent died from other causes.

The research showed that people had a greater chance of dying from a condition other than cancer the longer they survived after their original cancer diagnosis.

A research team was led by Professor Yi Ning from Virginia Commonwealth University, who looked cancer survivors who had taken part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The study was presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012.

Professor Ning said: "After the detection of cancer, clinicians and cancer survivors pay less attention to the prevention and treatment of other diseases and complications.

"We shouldn't neglect other aspects of health because we are focused on cancer and overlook other chronic conditions."

Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK, said: "Survival rates for cancer are getting better. So more and more, the needs of long-term survivors must be considered, both in terms of other conditions they may develop and relating to long term side effects of their treatment.

The study looked at cancer survivors overall.

Mr Ledwick added: "Within different types of cancer and for individual patients, outlook can vary."

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Longer survival times for people with cancer

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Many cancer patients  survive their disease nearly six times longer than they did 40 years ago, but more needs to be done to improve progress across all types of the disease, according to a report from Macmillan Cancer Support.

The overall average survival time is six years, with people with 11 of the 20 cancer types studied surviving their disease for more than five years.

People with bowel cancer have seen the largest surge in survival times, with a 17-fold increase to 10 years from seven months. The survival time for breast cancer has been more than 10 years since the early 1990s, double the figure in the 1970s.

Years have been added to the survival times for sufferers of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But for the nine other cancers there has been little improvement since the 1970s, with the survival times on average being three years or less. For brain, lung and pancreatic cancer, survival time is still measured in weeks, not years.

Brain cancer survival times are up from 13 weeks to 28 weeks, and lung cancer is up from 11 to 20 weeks. But there has been just a three-week increase in survival time for people with pancreatic cancer, which now stands at 12 weeks.

The study used median relative survival time to work out the averages by calculating when half of patients are still alive after being diagnosed. 

Ciaran Devane, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, said the report showed "the real picture of how long people are living after a cancer diagnosis.

"But the good news is tempered by the shocking variation between cancer types. Though we can celebrate increasing median survival times for some cancers such as breast and colon cancers, there has been lamentably poor progress made for lung and pancreatic cancer. It is clear that much, much more money needs to be put into research, surgery and treatment for the cancers with the poorest prognosis.

Sarah Lyness, executive director of policy and information at Cancer Research UK, said: "It's really good news that people with cancer are, on average, living up to six times longer than in the 1970s. This progress is thanks to research that led to better diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and Cancer Research UK played an important role in that work.

"But this success isn't seen across the board, so it's important that we continue our research on cancers that have shown little progress such as lung, stomach, oesophageal, pancreas and brain cancer. Spotting cancer early improves the chances that treatment is successful - so if you notice an unusual change in your body it's a good idea to see your doctor."

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More than five thousand children saved since 70s thanks to better cancer treatment

Monday 14 November 2011

Cancer Research UK Press Release

At least 5,600 more children have survived for at least five years after being diagnosed with cancer than would have done if survival rates had remained as they were in the early 1970s, according to new statistics from Cancer Research UK.

The figures show that since the 1970s, around 4,800 additional children* with leukaemia – the most common childhood cancer – survived their disease for at least five years. In the early 70s, 33 per cent of children survived their disease. Today survival rates for leukaemia have risen to more than 80 per cent. 

This increase in survival is largely due to the development of combination chemotherapy, which involves tackling the disease with a number of chemotherapy drugs. Cancer Research UK researchers played a key role in the clinical trials that proved the benefits of these treatments. 

Cancer Research UK scientists also made a vital leap forward when they discovered that there are several different types of childhood leukaemia. This breakthrough led to better treatments for the different forms of the disease, helping to save many more lives.

Similar improvements have been seen for other childhood cancers. Since 1971, survival rates from neuroblastoma have risen from 17 to 64 per cent and it is estimated that around 800 more children survived their disease for more than five years due to this increase.**

One of the reasons for this improvement was the development of a new way of giving chemotherapy, in higher doses and shorter intervals between treatments. Cancer Research UK was involved in this study, which improved survival rates by two thirds.

This groundbreaking work continues today through the Cancer Research UK Children’s Cancer Trials Team (CCTT), based in Birmingham. The CCTT coordinates clinical trials in 21 centres across the UK. These trials bring cutting edge science from the lab to the bedside, making innovative new treatments available to children with cancer. 

The new figures from Cancer Research UK are revealed as the charity launches its annual Little Stars Awards in partnership with TK Maxx that recognise the bravery of children who have undergone cancer treatment.

Chloe Gambrill, 13, from Ramsgate, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2005 at the age of six. Her mum Kelly said: “When we were told Chloe had leukaemia it was devastating. We knew that something wasn’t right but we never expected it to be cancer. It’s something you hear about that happens to other people’s children.

“Chloe’s treatment lasted for three years and it was hard going because it made her so unwell and there were times when we didn’t know if she would make it. Fortunately she responded really well to the combination of chemotherapy she received and to know that Cancer Research UK is continuing to fund research into children’s cancers means everything to us because without it, Chloe would not be here today.”

Kelly nominated her daughter for a Little Star Award to help raise her spirits while she was going through treatment. Relatives and friends of young cancer patients and survivors from across the country are being urged to nominate them now for special recognition of their courage. Last year more than 200 children from across the UK received a Little Star Award from Cancer Research UK and sponsor TK Maxx.

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said: “More children are surviving cancer than ever before and our efforts are continuing to make an even bigger impact. We are funding a trial to offer a pioneering new treatment to children with a particularly aggressive form of neuroblastoma that could help even more beat the disease. Childhood cancers are difficult to research, with relatively few children diagnosed each year. But our researchers are continuing our efforts to find ways to diagnose the disease earlier and looking for new drugs and making the existing treatments even more effective.”

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Poor people more likely to view cancer as fatal

Thursday 6 October 2011

Cancer Research UK Press Release

People in lower paid jobs are pessimistic about the benefits of diagnosing cancer early and more scared than affluent people to see a doctor about an unusual symptom, new research shows.

The Cancer Research UK-funded study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention* today (Thursday), concluded that people from lower socio-economic backgrounds were more fatalistic about cancer.

Researchers interviewed over 2,000 British adults and analysed their attitudes towards early detection and seeing a doctor about worrying symptoms.

Overall, most people were realistic about cancer survival – believing that half of those diagnosed with cancer survive their disease for at least five years.

But people from the lowest socio-economic section of society were less likely to believe that cancer could be cured – on average they believed that only 26 per cent of people diagnosed with cancer survive their disease for at least five years.

Study author Dr Rebecca Beeken from the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London (UCL) said: “This study shows that people with lower socio-economic status may think it is less worthwhile to detect cancer early because they are more fatalistic about the outcome.

“These differences in the way people perceive cancer could lead to inequalities in cancer survival.”

Only 10 per cent of respondents said they would be too frightened to see their doctor if they had a symptom that they thought might be cancer.

Among people in lower skilled jobs the percentage was 14 per cent compared with 6 per cent among people in managerial or professional jobs.

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: “We’ve witnessed huge improvements in cancer survival in recent decades, with UK survival doubling over the last 40 years. But we know that the most deprived patients are less likely to survive their cancer than the most affluent patients, which is a huge cause for concern.

“Reducing inequality in cancer survival is vital if we are to ensure the UK is comparable with the best survival rates in the world. This study suggests that addressing attitudes towards cancer in some of the poorest parts of society will play an important role in doing this.

“We are working to better understand the role that deprivation plays. We know that we need to encourage the adoption of healthy lifestyles and to diagnose all cancers as early as possible – by improving symptom awareness, encouraging prompt visits to the doctor, and by supporting GPs to appropriately refer patients. We also need to ensure that all patients have access to optimal treatment for their cancer, regardless of where they live, their age and their economic circumstances.”

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Report shows early diagnosis key to improving pancreatic cancer survival

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Patients with pancreatic cancer in the UK appear to have lower survival rates, on average, than patients in other developed countries, according to a report by the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK.

Compared with patients in the US, Australia, Canada, and other EU countries, UK pancreatic cancer patient outcomes are below 'acceptable levels', the report said.

Every year, more than 8,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Although the survival rate has more than doubled since the 1970s, it still has one of the poorest survival rates of any common cancer.

Pancreatic Cancer UK's report, Study for Survival, claims that more than half of patients experience symptoms for four to six months, and can visit the doctor five or more times before they are diagnosed.

This suggests a need to emphasise diagnosing the disease early, the charity said.

Alex Ford, Pancreatic Cancer UK's chief executive, said: "For the first time, the Study for Survival report provides valuable insights and clearly identifies the challenges and the immediate changes which are urgently required to help increase the UK's poor survival rates and improve quality of life for those affected by pancreatic cancer."

Henry Scowcroft, Cancer Research UK's science information manager, said: "Pancreatic cancer is particularly hard to diagnose and treat, and has one of the lowest survival rates for any cancer. But that's no excuse for patients in the UK faring worse than those in other countries - we urgently need to improve the way we manage the disease in this country.

"The good news is that, over the last ten years, there's been an increase in funding for pancreatic cancer research, as funders like Cancer Research UK focus their efforts on such hard-to-treat cancers, and this will lead to better treatments in the future.

"And thanks to efforts by us and others to spot cancer earlier, we're trying to help patients and doctors be more aware of early signs of cancer, and ultimately, save lives."

Professor Sir Mike Richards, the government's National Clinical Director for Cancer and End of Life Care, welcomed the report, and said that all pancreatic cancer patients should have access to expert input from multidisciplinary teams located at specialist pancreatic cancer centres, and one-to-one support from Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNSs).

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Cancer rates rise in middle-aged

Monday 18 July 2011

Cancer Research UK Press Release

CANCER rates in middle-aged men and women in Great Britain have gone up by nearly 20 per cent in a generation – an increase of 17,000 cases a year – according to new figures released today (Monday) by Cancer Research UK.

And among women in their forties and fifties cancer rates have risen by more than 25 per cent.

In 1979 44,000 people, aged 40-59, were diagnosed with cancer in Britain but the latest figures for 2008 show almost 61,000 people in the same age group have been struck by the disease. And the cancer incidence rates in this age group have increased from 329 per 100,000 to 388 per 100,000.

Cases of cancer in men have risen from almost 20,000 in 1979 to almost 24,000 in 2008 while in women cases have increased from more than 24,000 to more than 36,500.*

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But despite such an alarming increase in people getting cancer, the number surviving the disease is better than ever before as figures show survival has doubled since the 70s. But there is still much more to do to combat the rising number of cancer sufferers in middle age as well as later in life.

As Cancer Research UK launches its new national TV advertising campaign today the charity’s message is clear: valuable publicly funded research has enabled more people to beat cancer. But as tens of thousands continue to develop the disease more money is needed to identify effective ways of prevention and better treatments for patients.

The increasing number of people being diagnosed with cancer is, in part, due to the NHS breast screening programme and the PSA test for prostate cancer. Screening will detect more cancers at an earlier stage and this means treatment is more likely to be successful.

Among 40-59 year olds, prostate cancer rates** have risen sixfold in 30 years and breast cancer rates*** have increased by 50 per cent. But cases of lung cancer in men of this age have dropped from 6,300 to around 2,700.****

Nisha Sidhu, a mother of three from Ascot, Berkshire, appears in the TV advertisement which is launched today. Nisha was just 41 years old when she noticed a lump in her breast while taking a shower three years ago.

“I didn’t tell any of the family but after a couple of weeks I went to the doctor. Even when I was sent for a mammogram I was in denial about what it could be. I felt very well, had no other symptoms and there was no breast cancer in my family.”

Nisha had a mammogram and biopsy before being given the news she had breast cancer. “I just hadn’t thought it could be cancer and had gone for the tests with my four year old son. It was a real shock but I knew I just had to get on with the treatment.”

After a lumpectomy and chemotherapy Nisha is now on a course of tamoxifen and she runs a support group where she has met other middle aged breast cancer survivors. “I hadn’t realised how many women in their forties and fifties are being diagnosed. I am doing Relay for Life to raise money for Cancer Research UK and I want to help raise awareness among women that they should go to the doctor at the first sign of any change in their breast.”

Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: “There has been undeniable progress in the treatment of cancer over the last 40 years and many more people are surviving the disease. But we must redouble our efforts to ensure that our research continues to discover new techniques to improve and refine diagnosis and treatment so that cancer survival becomes the norm for patients, irrespective of the cancer they have or their age at diagnosis.

“It is entirely due to the amazing generosity of the public that we are able to support the work of the 4,000 dedicated doctors, nurses and scientists who continue to unlock the secrets of a disease that affects us all. As cancer incidence rises and the economy tightens, we need their support now more than ever.”

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Deprivation leads to over 2,600 deaths a year

Friday 17 June 2011

Cancer Research UK Press Release

MORE than 2,600 deaths in England from some of the most common types of cancer could be avoided each year if all cancer patients had the same chance of survival as the most affluent section of society, a new piece of research suggests.

The study, presented at the National Cancer Intelligence Network conference in London, found that the most well- off patients enjoyed a higher survival rate than the poorest patients1.

Over 2,600 deaths from 14 of the most common forms of cancer2 could be avoided each year in England in the five years after diagnosis if all patients had the same chance of survival regardless of their economic background.

The difference in survival between the richest patients and the poorest was the widest in the month after diagnosis.

Researchers from King’s College London suggested that more cancer patients from deprived backgrounds were diagnosed when the disease was at a late stage and often harder to treat – leading to the differences in survival.

This variation in survival could be due to many reasons - poorer people may be delaying seeing their doctor about worrying symptoms or they may be less likely to go for screening.

Not surprisingly, the greatest numbers of avoidable deaths were from breast, lung, bowel and prostate cancers - the four most common cancers in the UK.

The results showed that the number of deaths each year for breast cancer could be reduced by around 490, by 330 for lung cancer, around 690 for bowel cancer and around 330 for prostate cancer.

Margreet Lüchtenborg, lead author of the study based at King’s College London, said: “This study shows that deprivation leads to inequality in survival for the most common cancers in England, especially in the month immediately after diagnosis.

“This could be because poor patients are more likely to be diagnosed with a late stage cancer.”

The study looked at more than 1.5 million cancer patients in England diagnosed with 14 of the most common cancer types between 1999 and 2007 and analysed survival from 2004 to 2007 for five different groups based on measures of wealth.

Chris Carrigan, head of the NCIN, said: “This study once again stresses the urgent need to improve the health of people living in deprived areas and to make sure all cancer patients have an equal chance of surviving their cancer.

“Deprivation is one of the biggest causes of cancer inequality in this country. We know that people from more deprived areas are more likely to smoke or be very overweight. They are also less likely to be aware of signs and symptoms of cancer, probably leading to later diagnosis, which may further increase their chances of dying from their disease.

“We need to take a close look at factors like late diagnosis, uptake of screening and variations in treatment for people from different social and economic backgrounds if we are to reduce inequality in cancer survival.

“But in the meantime everyone can do their bit by giving up smoking, eating sensibly and seeing a GP as soon as possible if they notice anything unusual.”

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Poorer women less likely to survive breast cancer

Thursday 9 June 2011

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Poorer women from deprived areas are less likely to survive breast cancer as they are diagnosed at a later stage which means the best available treatments won’t be as effective according to a new report out today (Thursday) by the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN).

The ‘All Breast Cancer Report’ is the first in-depth analysis in the UK to look at how the impact of treatment and route of diagnosis – either through screening or symptoms presented to a GP – affects the chance of surviving the disease1, among people with different levels of poverty2.

This gap could, in part, explain why England’s breast cancer survival rates are lower than in some other countries. Poorer women are being diagnosed with more advanced stage tumours which are detected too late for surgery or need more aggressive treatment.

For women presenting with symptoms of breast cancer, the report found a 15 per cent difference between the most (68 per cent) and least (83 per cent) deprived in those women who survive for more than five years3.

But there was very little difference in survival between the most and least deprived women who were diagnosed through screening.

Gill Lawrence, director of the West Midlands Cancer Intelligence Unit and report author, said: “These figures show that even though a greater number of affluent women develop breast cancer every year, poorer women are more likely to die from the disease. Not going for screening and delays in going to the doctor mean that less affluent women are being diagnosed with later stage cancers which need more invasive surgery and are far less likely to be treated with breast conserving surgery.

“But, if these women attend screening, are breast aware and go to their doctor as soon as they notice anything unusual for them such as a lump or changes to the nipple like a rash or dimpling there’s no reason why poorer women shouldn’t have the same chance of survival as more affluent women.”

Martin Lee, chair of the National Cancer Intelligence Network breast clinical reference group and consultant surgeon at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, said: “Having a more advanced breast cancer at diagnosis is a double blow, as more aggressive treatments are needed, and the outlook is worse.

“I know from my own experience with patients that they find it more distressing to cope with the diagnosis if they need both mastectomy and chemotherapy. Fortunately breast screening with mammograms is finding earlier stage cancers that can be controlled by less radical treatments and have better survival; it is particularly encouraging to see that this is narrowing the gap in outcomes between affluent and deprived women.”

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Cancer survivorship 'varies by sexual orientation'

Monday 9 May 2011

Gay men are more likely to say they have previously been diagnosed with cancer than heterosexual men, while lesbian and bisexual women who have survived the disease tend to report worse health than heterosexual female survivors, new research suggests.

The results of a study by researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health and published in the journal Cancer, suggest that services should be tailored to people of different sexual orientations.

Led by Dr Ulrike Boehmer, the team investigated how many cancer survivors identify themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, information that is not included in most cancer studies.

They also investigated how the health of survivors differs depending on sexual orientation, using data from the California Health Interview surveys conducted in 2001, 2003 and 2005 to come to their conclusions.

Some 7,252 women and 3,690 men included in the study reported that they had been diagnosed with cancer as adults in what is the largest state health survey carried out in the US.

There was no significant difference in prevalence among women of different sexual orientations, although lesbian and bisexual female cancer survivors were twice as likely - two and 2.3 times respectively - to report ‘fair’ or ‘poor health’ as their heterosexual peers.

Gay men were 1.9 times more likely to report a previous diagnosis of cancer than heterosexual males, but there were no differences in self-reported health levels among survivors.

Jessica Harris, Cancer Research UK's senior health information officer, said: "There is already evidence of some health inequalities as a result of sexuality, for example, smoking rates are higher in homosexual men and women than in heterosexual people.

"In this Californian survey, gay men said they were were more likely than straight men to have been diagnosed with cancer, but it's not clear from this study why this might be. It could be down to better survival or higher rates of cancer among gay men and we'd need larger studies that take both of these factors into account to find out."

Dr Boehmer said: "This information can be used for the development of services for the lesbian, gay and bisexual population. Because more gay men report as cancer survivors, we need foremost programmes for gay men that focus on primary cancer prevention and early cancer detection."

She proposed providing services that seek to improve well-being among lesbian and bisexual cancer survivors.

She also called for future studies to assess research areas such as whether more gay men report having had cancer because a greater number are being diagnosed or because more are surviving than heterosexual men.

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Ovarian cancer survival doubles in 30 years

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Survival from ovarian cancer has almost doubled over the last 30 years according to new figures from Cancer Research UK released today.

The overall five year survival rate for ovarian cancer has increased from 21 per cent in the early 1970s to 41 per cent today. Over 1,000 more women per year in England and Wales are now surviving ovarian cancer for at least 5 years due to improved survival rates1.

But more work is needed to see the same improvements in women diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer.

Based on data from the East of England Cancer Registry (ECRIC), survival rates for women diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer – the majority (45 per cent) of women - still lag behind with just over 20 per cent surviving five years. And this falls to less than six per cent of women with stage IV disease2.

Ovarian cancer often develops without any clear symptoms and many women only discover they have it once it has spread.

Dr James Brenton, based at Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute and an ovarian cancer clinician at Addenbrooke’s hospital, said: “These latest figures show improvements in treatment, such as centralisation of ovarian cancer surgery and uniform access to chemotherapy, are making a difference in helping more women survive ovarian cancer, particularly those who are diagnosed earlier. But we face a real challenge in translating these improvements in survival to women whose ovarian cancer has already spread.”

In the 1980s Cancer Research UK scientists discovered a chemotherapy drug called carboplatin, now the ‘gold standard’ treatment for ovarian cancer. This not only treated women more successfully when they were first diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but offered new options to treat recurrences of the disease.

To tackle the issue of late diagnosis Cancer Research UK are helping to fund a pivotal trial of ovarian cancer screening. More than 200,000 women are participating in this nationwide trial testing whether ultrasound scanning and a blood test can save lives.

The early results have been promising, and if the final findings, expected in 2015, show this is successful it could lead to a national screening programme that will help to detect the disease earlier and save many more lives.

Researchers are also looking at developing more targeted treatments that are aimed at the particular characteristics of a woman’s ovarian cancer. Cancer Research UK scientists are playing a key role in developing this new generation of drugs including PARP inhibitors, which could help women with ovarian cancer who also have faulty BRCA genes. They are already showing promising results in clinical trials and could make a big difference for many women with ovarian cancer in the future.

Dr Brenton added: “Ovarian cancer is starting to become a more controllable chronic disease but a cure remains elusive in most cases. We need to investigate the full potential of targeted treatments such as PARP inhibitors as they may also benefit women who don’t have faulty BRCA genes. Hopefully through these new treatments and, importantly, with better ways to screen and detect the cancer earlier, we will help more women beat the disease.”

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women, each year around 6,500 women are diagnosed with the disease, with most cases diagnosed in women over 50.
Around 4,400 women died of ovarian cancer in 2008 though mortality rates have fallen by 14 per cent over the last decade.

Cancer Research UK is the largest single funder of ovarian cancer research in the UK, last year spending over £12 million of public donations on tackling the disease.

Dr Lesley Walker, Cancer Research UK’s director of cancer information, said: “These figures show that we’re making steady progress against ovarian cancer but much more needs to be done. Cancer Research UK is committed to finding new ways to treat and detect the disease. In the coming years we could really see some of the benefits of this work, particularly a potential nationwide screening programme that finds women with the disease earlier.

“New treatments are also in the pipeline that could help keep the disease under control for longer, meaning that ovarian cancer becomes a disease that women can live with for many years."

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Late breast cancer diagnosis in elderly leads to poor survival

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Women over 70 are being diagnosed with breast cancer at a later stage leading to lower survival from the disease in the elderly, new research showed today (Wednesday).

The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer*, also found that older breast cancer patients were less likely to receive the same level of treatment as younger patients.

Scientists said that improving access to treatment, in particular surgery, among the elderly could significantly improve their breast cancer survival.

They found that it was also important for women to report any symptoms to their GP as soon as they noticed them and be aware they could continue to have access to screening.

The research analysed over 14,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1999 and 2007 from Eastern Cancer Registration and Information Centre (ECRiC) and looked at five and ten-year survival for patients in four different age groups.**

The results showed that women diagnosed with breast cancer between 50 and 69 years had an 89 per cent chance of surviving their disease for five-years.***

However this fell to 81 per cent for women aged 70-74 years old and to 70 per cent for women over 80.

Three per cent of women in the 50-69 age group were diagnosed with breast cancer at a late stage.**** These women would have been routinely invited for a mammogram every three years through the national screening programme.

In comparison, eight per cent of women 70-74 and 10 per cent of women over 80 had a late stage diagnosis.

Women diagnosed at a late stage had a 14 per cent chance of surviving their disease for five-years.

Dr Paul Pharoah, a Cancer Research UK-funded scientist and one of the study’s authors based at the University of Cambridge, said: “This study suggests that improving the way breast cancer is diagnosed and treated in the elderly could mean fewer die prematurely from the disease.

“The national breast screening programme is very good at picking up cases of breast cancer in 50-70 age group it is aimed at.

“But more needs to be done to raise awareness of the disease in older women who are not automatically invited for mammograms, especially since risk of the disease increases with age.”

The research also suggested that older women did not always receive the same level of treatment for breast cancer as younger patients.

Around 96 per cent of women aged 50-69 years old had surgery for breast cancer, but this fell to around 60 per cent for women over 70.

Dr Pharoah said that factors like patient preferences, suitability and other illness could explain the differences in treatment – but only to a certain point.

He added that more detailed diagnoses of breast cancer in the elderly could ensure that older women suitable for treatments like surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy received them.

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: “We know that older people are less likely to survive breast cancer - this study highlights that many factors are at play and that late diagnosis and varying access to treatment, in particular, are playing a key role.

“Late diagnosis in the elderly could also be down to women delaying a visit to the doctor, so it’s really vital that women are aware of breast cancer symptoms.

“After they turn 70, many women assume that breast cancer is less of a risk because they are no longer invited for screening but this isn’t the case.

“More must be done to ensure that older women are well informed about their breast cancer risk, their option to ask for a mammogram and are consistently offered a full range of treatment options where this might benefit them.

“Further work needs to be done to understand why there are these large differences in breast cancer survival between older and younger women so that we can work to ensure that this gap is closed.”

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New cancer strategy focuses on earlier diagnosis and improved access to treatment

Wednesday 12 January 2011

The coalition government has published its new cancer strategy, which aims to save 5,000 lives a year by facilitating earlier diagnosis and improving access to life-saving therapies.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley unveiled details of the strategy, 'Improving Outcomes - A Strategy for Cancer', which will be supported by more than £750 million of funding over the next four years.

The plans are designed to drive up England's cancer survival rates so that they match the best in Europe, saving an extra 5,000 lives every year by 2014-15.

Mr Lansley said: "Cancer affects us all. Everyone will have a story of someone they love battling the disease. In those instances we all need to know that the NHS will be there for us.

"Our ambition is simple - to deliver survival rates among the best in Europe and this strategy outlines how we will make our first steps towards this.

"The coalition government's reforms of health and care services will drive improvements in what matters most to patients and their families - including cancer outcomes. Our commitment is to save 5,000 extra lives a year from 2014-15 and that is what we will be measuring our success against."

One of the key actions will be to increase earlier diagnosis, backed by the provision of more than £450 million over four years to Public Health England.

This will enable the new public health service to promote the NHS screening programmes and raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer.

Money will also go towards increasing access to diagnostic tests at GP surgeries and providing more testing and treatment in secondary care, including greater provision of radiotherapy.

Other plans outlined in the strategy document include promoting the uptake of the latest surgical procedures, reducing regional variation in access to treatment, the development of tariffs for chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and pilots of a national cancer survivorship survey and the collection of data on women with secondary breast cancer.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, England's clinical director for cancer, said: "We know the main reason our survival rates lag behind other countries is because too many people are diagnosed late. This is why our strategy focuses on earlier diagnosis which we will achieve through raising the public's awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer and also providing better access to diagnostic tests.

"But improving outcomes for people with cancer isn't just about improving survival rates. It is also about improving patients' experience of care and the quality of life for cancer survivors and our strategy also sets out how that will be tackled."

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: "We warmly welcome the new commitment set out in this strategy, to deliver survival rates among the best in Europe and to save an extra 5,000 lives per year within this parliament.

"Diagnosing cancer earlier will be the key driver in achieving these aims, and the additional investment made available for this is critical. The government now needs to ensure that this new investment flows through and is quickly taken up by frontline services.

"More than one in three people will get cancer at some point in their lives. Getting cancer diagnosed as early as possible and ensuring that all patients have quick access to the best, targeted treatments are issues that we have campaigned on and will save more lives in the future."

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UK survival for major cancers improves, but still lags behind other countries

Wednesday 22 December 2010

Despite gaining ground, survival figures for newly diagnosed breast, ovarian, bowel and lung cancers were still lower in the UK than in Australia, Canada and Sweden between 1995 and 2007, a new study in the Lancet medical journal shows.

The research looked at one, five-year and five-year 'conditional' survival for these four major cancers between 1995 and 2007 in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK (excluding Scotland), Denmark and Norway.

Among other things, one-year survival figures can give information about how late cancers are being diagnosed, as the later cancer is diagnosed the lower the proportion of patients who survive one year.

Five-year 'conditional' survival looks at five-year survival rates among people who survive at least one year, and is thought to be an indication of the quality of care and treatment received.

Survival figures over this period were found to be better for patients in Australia, Canada or Sweden than for those in the UK or Denmark, while Norway's survival rates were intermediate.

For example, five-year bowel cancer survival for 2005-07 was 54 per cent in the UK compared to 66 per cent in Australia, while one-year survival for lung cancer was around 30 per cent in the UK, compared to 43 per cent in Australia and 44 per cent in Sweden.

Experts say that late diagnosis or differences in treatment are likely to be behind the lower survival rates in Denmark and the UK.

But the study also shows that, while the UK's survival rates are not as high as those in other countries, relative survival did improve for all four cancers between 1995 and 2007.

One-year and five-year breast cancer survival rates improved more in the UK and Denmark than in the other countries between 1995 and 2007, indicating that the UK's cancer plans, which were introduced in England in 2000, Northern Ireland in 1996 and Wales in 2004, may have made a difference.

The study authors wrote: "Differences in individual, health-system and clinical factors - such as public awareness of cancer, diagnostic delay, stage [of cancer at diagnosis], comorbidity [other serious illnesses at time of cancer diagnosis] and access to optimum treatment - are all potential explanations for the overall differences in relative survival.

"The patterns are consistent with late diagnosis or differences in treatment, particularly in Denmark and the UK, and in patients aged 65 years and older."

The research was carried out as part of the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership, a collaboration aimed at understanding the reasons for differences in cancer outcomes between countries. The new paper is the first to emerge from 'module one' of the partnership's work, which aims to generate quality data to base future analyses on.

Other modules will attempt to unpick the reasons for these discrepancies.

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, which helped to fund the study, said: "It's encouraging to see that survival for breast, bowel, lung and ovarian cancers has improved across the board and this study shows how far survival has improved for some of the most common cancers in the UK. But we still have work to do. Now we know how we currently compare to other countries, we must look at exactly why these differences in survival exist.

"When the government refreshes its cancer strategy, it's vital to retain a focus on early diagnosis and on improving equitable access to treatment. We also urge the government to continue to collect good quality information. Reliable data - which are consistent across the country - are crucial to understanding the extent of the problem and identifying the causes of the survival gap within the UK and compared to other countries."

Sir Mike Richards, England's national director for cancer, said: "These data will be crucial in helping all the partners involved improve their cancer outcomes.

"In England we have already started work on improving early diagnosis, including a new campaign starting next month to alert people to the early signs and symptoms of bowel, lung and breast cancer, and plans to give GPs more direct access to key diagnostic tests. Full details of our future plans will follow when the coalition government launches its new cancer strategy in the new year."

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Deaths from cancer in children fall by almost 60 per cent since the '60s

Friday 12 November 2010

Cancer Research UK Press Release

The rate of children dying from cancer has fallen by almost 60 per cent over the last 40 years, according to new figures from Cancer Research UK.

In the late 1960s, around 940 children died from the disease every year but this fell to around 290 a year in the latest figures available. In the late ‘60s, less than three out of 10 children survived beyond 5 years. Today, that figure is almost eight out of 10.

This good news is more marked for some types of cancer. Forty years ago less than 40 per cent of children diagnosed with a lymphoma would survive more than five years, today almost 90 per cent beat the disease.

And around 80 per cent of children are now cured through treatment for leukaemia compared to less than 10 per cent in the late 1960s.

The overall death rate dropped from 73.4 per million children between 1966 and 1970 to 31.9 per million children between 2001 and 20051 - a fall of almost 60 per cent.

This success is thanks to years of research and new treatments, many of which Cancer Research UK has played a pivotal role in.

The new figures from Cancer Research UK are revealed as the charity launches its annual Little Star Awards in partnership with labels-for-less retailer TK Maxx.

For many years Cancer Research UK has been at the forefront of bringing a range of new treatments to the UK, saving the lives of thousands of children. Treatment advances include the shortening the interval between chemotherapy, which increased survival in children with neuroblastoma.

But, not all cancers have seen the improvements that leukaemia has. For example, five year survival is 44 per cent for certain types of gliomas – a type of brain tumour.

To continue its life saving work and help more children beat the disease, Cancer Research UK opened the Children’s Cancer Trials Team (CCTT) within the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Birmingham earlier this year. By co-ordinating national treatment trials in the UK they are playing a key role in bringing new and more effective therapies to children with cancer.

In December last year, Cancer Research UK launched a clinical trial for children with advanced neuroblastoma. This trial has brought a pioneering treatment called immunotherapy to the UK, which uses the body’s own immune system to hunt out and destroy cancer cells, helping to prevent the disease coming back.

Dr Pam Kearns, director of the Cancer Research UK Children’s Cancer Trials Team, said: “More children are beating cancer thanks to the transformation and improvements of treatments over the last 30 years, with ways of treating the disease offering greater hope to children diagnosed with cancer. We need to continue this work so that every child who is diagnosed with cancer has the best possible chance of beating the disease.”

In the UK around 1,500 children are diagnosed with cancer each year and leukaemia is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in children. It’s estimated that there are around 26,000 childhood cancer survivors in Britain.

Rebecca McFarlane’s daughter Bonnie (10) was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2005 and took part in a trail part-funded by Cancer Research UK, called the UK ALL trial.

Rebecca, from Woking in Surrey, said: “Bonnie’s cancer was very aggressive and did not respond to regular treatment. She was entered into a clinical trial which looked at different combinations of chemotherapy for children according to how aggressive their disease was. Bonnie’s treatment lasted for just over two years and the drugs worked because in October 2007 doctors were confident enough to say that the cancer was in remission. We are so grateful for all the advances in research that have been achieved in order that children like Bonnie can receive life saving treatments.”

In February Bonnie received a Little Star Award from Cancer Research UK and TK Maxx.

Now in their eighth year, the Little Star Awards recognise the courage of children who have encountered cancer and are backed by a host of celebrities including singer Leona Lewis and footballer Ryan Giggs.

Unlike many other children’s awards, there is no judging panel because Cancer Research UK and TK Maxx believe each and every child who confronts cancer is special.

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “These new figures show that years of hard work by researchers across the world are paying off. Cancer Research UK is the largest single funder of research into childhood cancers in the UK, spending over £9 million every year. This research will lead to even more success stories for children diagnosed with cancer in the future.”

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Cancer survival rates improving across England

Thursday 9 September 2010

Cancer survival rates have improved across England, according to two new reports from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

But the reports also reveal that there are still gaps in survival, with patients from wealthy areas having a better chance of beating cancer than their poorer counterparts.

The two reports looked at adults diagnosed with cancer between 1991 and 2006 and followed their progress until 2007, providing one-year and five-year survival estimates for cancers of the oesophagus (foodpipe), stomach, bowel, lung, breast and cervix.

One report looked at data from different Cancer Networks; the other looked at survival rates across different Primary Care Trusts.

The first report on Cancer Networks showed that, between 1991-95 and 2001-06, one- and five-year relative survival from cancers of the foodpipe, stomach, bowel, lung and breast improved by three to ten percentage points.

However, regional disparities in survival did not decrease between 1991 and 2006.

Data for 2001-06 revealed a difference of more than ten percentage points between the networks with highest and lowest one-year survival rates for cancers of the foodpipe, stomach, bowel and lung (women).

Commenting on the second report, Catherine Thomson, head of statistical information at Cancer Research UK, observed that it was one of the most detailed investigations to compare overall cancer survival rates across the whole of England.

She said: "These figures are encouraging and reinforce previous ones showing that in general cancer survival rates have significantly improved over the past 40 years.

"But this study also flags up certain areas, particularly those in the north of England and those which are generally deprived, that are consistently falling short of the national average.

"Late diagnosis of cancer could help explain some of this north-south divide and why the poorer areas tend to do worse. This could help highlight where efforts to promote early diagnosis could be best targeted to help save lives."

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Study finds childhood cancer survivors have higher risk of dying years later

Thursday 15 July 2010

Childhood cancer survivors may have an increased risk of death from other forms of cancer, cardiac and cerebrovascular causes more than 25 years after their initial illness, UK scientists have found.

A research team at the University of Birmingham examined long-term death rates among 17,981 childhood cancer survivors, all of whom had been diagnosed before the age of 15 years between 1940 and 1991 and had lived for at least five years from their initial diagnosis.

Participants were followed up until the end of 2006, during which time there were 3,049 deaths.

Researchers found that the risk of death among childhood cancer survivors was 11 times higher than expected for the general population.

This increase in risk shrank as time went by, but was still three times higher than expected 45 years after an initial cancer diagnosis.

Although the risk of dying from cancer recurrence decreased over time, the risk of dying from second primary cancers, heart disease or stroke increased.

After 45 years, the risk of dying from a second primary cancer was 3.6 times higher for cancer survivors than for the general population.

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study authors noted that survival from childhood cancer has improved "dramatically" in recent decades, but that survivors continue to have a heightened risk of dying for many years.

They revealed: "Beyond 45 years from diagnosis, recurrence accounted for seven per cent of the excess number of deaths observed, while second primary cancers and circulatory deaths together accounted for 77 per cent.

"Second primary cancers are a recognised late complication of childhood cancer, largely due to exposure to radiation during treatment, but specific cytotoxic [toxic to cells] drugs also have been implicated in the development of second primary cancers."

The researchers also observed: "These findings confirm the importance of very long-term outcome data and that survivors should be able to access healthcare programmes even decades after treatment.

"Finding ways to successfully intervene to reduce these potentially preventable premature deaths will be complex."

Dr Joanna Owens, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: "Large studies like these are essential for us to understand the long-term effects of being treated for cancer. This information will play an important part in shaping the care of children diagnosed with cancer and ensuring that they receive appropriate physical and psychological support during their treatment and beyond.

"But it's worth noting that the people in this study were diagnosed and treated between 1940 and 1991, and children diagnosed today can benefit from considerable advances in treatment. Survival rates for childhood cancer have risen rapidly since the 1960s, and it is estimated that there are at least 26,000 people alive in the UK today who have been successfully treated for childhood cancers."

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Long-term survival from once-deadly cancers doubles

Monday 12 July 2010

Cancer Research UK Press Release

People diagnosed with breast, bowel and ovarian cancers and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma are today twice as likely to survive for at least 10 years as those diagnosed in the early 1970s according to new figures1 released by Cancer Research UK.

The percentage of women likely to survive breast cancer for at least 10 years has jumped from less than 40 per cent to 77 per cent while the proportion of people likely to survive bowel cancer has risen from 23 per cent to 50 per cent.

Twice as many patients with ovarian cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma are likely to survive for at least 10 years with survival increasing from 18 to 35 per cent and from 22 to 51 per cent respectively. And for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, 10-year survival is predicted to increase from less than 50 per cent to around 80 per cent.

There is also encouraging news for leukaemia with patients four times as likely to survive for 10 years compared with those diagnosed in the early 1970s.
And while 10-year survival is still low for oesophageal cancer and myeloma (both below 20 per cent) it is predicted to have trebled over the same period.

As Cancer Research UK launches its new national TV advertising campaign today the message is clear: much has been achieved in the fight against cancer but there is still more to do. The advertisement aims to improve awareness of cancer and to raise money for continuing research.

Claire Daniels is one of the cancer survivors who appear in the television ad. She was a student at Warwick University when she complained of excessive fatigue and weight loss before being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

She returned to her parents’ home in Manchester where she was initially treated with chemotherapy at the Christie Hospital. But the cancer returned and Claire had further intensive chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a stem cell transplant after which she had to spend a month in an isolation ward.

Now 24, Claire, from Leamington Spa, works as an events’ organiser at Cancer Research UK in London. “In between treatments I organised some student balls to raise money for cancer and it really helped me to focus and detract from the illness,” she said. “I wanted to stand up in front of my peers and say: ‘Don’t think cancer is just a disease that happens to old people. A year ago I was a student partying just like you. I’m 19 but I’ve got cancer.’ That’s when I realised I’d like to organise events for a living.

“I feel very lucky that I was able to have such effective treatment - some of which was shaped by the charity’s researchers - and that’s why I was so pleased to be part of this campaign. Everyone who appears in the TV ad is either a cancer survivor or a cancer doctor; there aren’t any actors so we are all genuinely involved in fighting this disease.”

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said: "There are many reasons for our continuing success in the fight against cancer, including faster diagnosis, better surgery, more effective radiotherapy and many new drugs, all developed using the knowledge that our laboratory research has given us.

“We expect this trend to continue, hastened by Cancer Research UK's investment in research in all these areas.”

In breast cancer, more personalised treatment is helping to increase survival and in bowel cancer improvements in surgery have had a very positive effect. Targeted treatments like imatinib and rituximab have clearly increased survival for some leukaemias and lymphomas. Better supportive care of patients being treated with strong drugs has also contributed to these encouraging results.

Professor Michel Coleman, head of Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Survival Group, who calculated the figures, said: “These big increases in long-term survival since the 1970s reflect real progress in cancer diagnosis and treatment, and they confirm the immense value of having a National Cancer Registry that holds simple information about all cancer patients diagnosed during the last 30-40 years.

“Ten-year survival figures for patients diagnosed in 2007 are of course predictions, but they are derived from the latest national data on cancer patient survival – and for most cancers, the true 10-year survival for these patients will turn out to be higher than we report.”

Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: “It is thanks to our supporters and the dedicated work of our doctors and scientists that we are seeing such encouraging improvements in long-term survival of many cancers.

“But we have to do better. We need to develop even more effective treatments that can prolong life further and we need to ensure that each individual patient has optimal treatment.

“Research is expensive and – because we rely completely on donations from the public – we can only continue our vital work with people’s generous support.”

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Liver surgery leads to 'remarkable' boost for bowel cancer survival

Wednesday 2 June 2010

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Patients with bowel cancer that has spread to the liver and who are eligible for surgery, are around 40 per cent more likely to survive if they undergo an operation to remove the liver disease.

If bowel cancer is diagnosed late when the disease has spread to other organs such as the liver – stage four of the disease – fewer than one in ten patients will survive beyond five years (7 per cent).

Now a new study from the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) shows that liver resection – removing the cancerous part of the liver and a small part of healthy tissue around it – can boost five year survival up to more than four in ten (46 per cent).

Not all patients with stage four of the disease are eligible for the treatment but in those where the surgery is possible this study suggests outcomes can be significantly improved.

Around 48 per cent of people with stage three bowel cancer – diagnosed before the cancer has spread to other organs – survive beyond five years. This means that people with advanced bowel cancer who have disease that can be removed using this new type of surgery would have a similar chance of survival as people with earlier stages of the disease.

Cancer Research UK’s Dr Eva Morris, lead author based at the University of Leeds, said: “The difference this surgery can make is remarkable. Cancer that has spread is often very hard to treat, so it’s good to see that there’s an effective treatment option for some patients with advanced bowel cancer.

“Smaller trials have shown us that this technique is effective, but this is the first time we’ve been able to say just how successful it is on a national scale.

“This surgery is very skilled and should be undertaken by expert surgeons working in specialist liver units. We must work towards ensuring that all patients who need liver resections can access these services.”

Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK and more than 37, 400 cases are diagnosed each year. Between 7,000 – 9,000 of these cancers will have spread to the liver at the time of diagnosis.

This study, published in the British Journal of Surgery, looked at over 114,000 people who had undergone surgery for bowel cancer and over 3,000 who had also had liver resections.

Although first performed in 1943 this technique only became accepted practice in the mid 1990s as initially it was very high risk surgery. It ultimately became the gold standard treatment for bowel cancer that has spread to the liver in 2004.

Chris Carrigan, head of the NCIN, said: “Despite major advances in the treatment for bowel cancer, survival in advanced bowel cancer has remained disappointingly low. But these figures show that good progress is being made in this field.

“It also shows how important it is to catch the disease early. An NCIN report last year showed that more than nine in ten people survive bowel cancer if it’s caught at the earliest stage.”

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Lung cancer survival higher in Sweden than England

Friday 30 April 2010

The chances of surviving lung cancer are much lower in England than they are in Norway or Sweden, scientists at King's College London have found.

Researchers from the Division of Cancer Studies looked at five-year survival rates for lung cancer patients in the three countries.

A total of 250,828 patients were diagnosed with lung cancer in England between 1996 and 2004, along with 18,386 in Norway and 24,886 in Sweden.

Survival rates were found to be lowest in England and highest in Sweden, even after the age, sex and length of monitoring period of patients had been taken into account.

Overall, the proportion of Swedish lung cancer patients who survived for at least five years after diagnosis was almost twice as high as that in England.

Among male lung cancer patients, 11.3 per cent of those in Sweden, 9.3 per cent in Norway and 6.5 per cent in England were still alive after five years.

For women, the corresponding figures were nearly 16 per cent in Sweden, 13.5 per cent in Norway and 8.4 per cent in England.

This is despite the fact that the three countries spend similar amounts of healthcare and have comparable infrastructures.

The researchers, whose findings are published in Thorax journal, observed that the differences in death rates were already apparent in the first year after diagnosis. This indicates that early factors, such as stage of disease at diagnosis, were contributing to the differences.

For instance, the chances of an English lung cancer patient dying within three months of diagnosis between 2001 and 2004 were 23 per cent to 46 per cent higher than those of a patient in Norway.

They were also between 56 per cent and 91 per cent higher than for a patient in Sweden, depending on an individual's age and sex.

Lead researcher Professor Lars Holmberg revealed: "The data shows that patients in England are less likely to be actively treated with surgery and drugs than their Scandinavian counterparts.

"This may be because symptom awareness is poor in England and patients delay seeking medical help, so that by the time they do, their disease is already advanced and beyond curative treatment.

"However, we cannot exclude that differences in treatment activity - related or not to other co-existing illnesses, play a role," he added.

Sarah Woolnough, head of policy at Cancer Research UK, said: "All too often in this country, cancer is diagnosed later than it should be. This important new study reveals the scale of the challenge for lung cancer in particular, as the difference in survival was more marked in the first year after diagnosis. Although differences in treatment may play a role, spotting lung cancer early could make a real difference to survival rates.

"We're working with the Department of Health and NHS on the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI), which aims to get better results for cancer patients through earlier diagnosis."

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Radiotherapy delays linked to small increased risk of breast cancer recurrence

Wednesday 3 March 2010

The longer older women wait for radiation treatment after undergoing surgery for breast cancer, the greater the chances of the disease coming back, an international team of scientists has warned.

Researchers from the US, Canada and Japan analysed national cancer records for 18,050 US women in order to study the association between the interval from breast cancer surgery to radiotherapy and the rate of disease recurrence.

All of the women involved in the study had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer between 1991 and 2002, at the age of 65 or older, and had been treated with breast-conserving surgery followed by radiotherapy.

Women who started radiotherapy more than six weeks after surgery were found to face a small but significant increase in risk of local recurrence of breast cancer.

Publishing their findings in the British Medical Journal, the study authors concluded that radiotherapy should be started as soon as possible after breast cancer surgery to minimise the risk of the disease coming back.

They wrote: "There is a continuous relationship between the interval from breast-conserving surgery to radiotherapy and local recurrence in older women with breast cancer, suggesting that starting radiotherapy as soon as possible could minimise the risk of local recurrence."

Writing in an accompanying editorial, Ruth Jack and Lars Holmberg from King's College London said that the findings "should be taken seriously".

They claimed that healthcare providers "need to assess where potential delays are occurring and ensure that they are reduced, as well as ensuring equal opportunities in accessing good care".

Dr Jodie Moffat, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: "Radiotherapy plays a hugely significant role in the treatment of cancer. Although we have seen improvements in the amount of time people across the UK are waiting for their radiotherapy in recent years, we know that there are still some people who are waiting too long. This is not only distressing for patients, but as this research shows, could also have an impact on whether their treatment is successful. So it's important that all patients receive radiotherapy without delays.

"Cancer Research UK is calling on the governments across the UK to improve access to radiotherapy services. We know that radiotherapy can be complicated to plan and deliver, so we want to see strategies and resources in place to ensure that people receive radiotherapy when they need it and to reduce the unacceptable variations in radiotherapy provision across the country."

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New analysis suggests that lung cancer patients who quit smoking increase chances of survival

Wednesday 27 January 2010

People with early-stage lung cancer may double their chances of surviving for longer than five years by giving up smoking, UK scientists have found.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham analysed the results of ten existing studies, all of which had looked at the effect of quitting smoking on a person's outlook following a diagnosis of lung cancer.

They found that a person's cancer was more likely to come back, and they were more likely to develop another tumour if they carried on smoking after being diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer than if they gave up at that time. They were also more likely to die.

The study estimated that around 70 per cent of 65 year old patients with early-stage disease who quit would live for at least five years after their diagnosis, compared with just 33 per cent of persistent smokers.

This means that the chances of surviving for five years could be around twice as high for those who quit as they are for those who continue to smoke after their diagnosis.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the study authors suggested that it may be beneficial to provide smoking cessation treatment for patients with early-stage lung cancer.

They wrote: "These data provide a strong case that smoking cessation treatment for early-stage lung cancer patients who have been unable to quit may have an important role in secondary prevention."

Writing in an accompanying editorial, Tom Treasure, professor of cardiothoracic surgery at University College London's Clinical Operational Research Unit, and Professor Janet Treasure from King's College London noted that it is "never too late for people to stop, even when they have lung cancer".

Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK's head information nurse, commented: "This study helps to clarify that in early lung cancer there can be a real benefit to giving up smoking.

"So it is important that people in this situation are given the help and support they need to give up."

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Delays in cancer diagnosis 'claim thousands of lives each year'

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Earlier diagnosis of people with cancer could save between 5,000 and 10,000 lives each year, Professor Mike Richards, the National Cancer Director for England, has claimed.

Professor Richards has written an article for a special supplement of the British Journal of Cancer, which estimates the extent to which delayed diagnosis influences survival rates in England.

This analysis included data on late diagnosis and rates of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy for breast, bowel and lung cancer - the three cancers with the highest UK death rates - in the late 1990s in England and other European countries.

The paper noted that one-year survival for breast, bowel and lung cancers in England is lower than the European average and considerably below the countries with the best results.

The analysis indicates that late diagnosis was almost certainly a major contributor to poor survival in England for all three cancers.

The study revealed that between 5,000 and 10,000 deaths within five years of diagnosis could be avoided every year in England if efforts to promote earlier diagnosis and appropriate primary surgical treatment are successful.

Although exact estimates are impossible, it seems highly likely that these factors accounted for the large majority of the avoidable deaths in England observed during the 1990s for patients with breast, bowel and lung cancer.

There is no reason to think that the same factors will not apply in some, if not all, other cancers for which survival in England is below the European average.

The article noted that things are likely to have changed over the ten years since the data were collected, with major progress being made in terms of cutting hospital waiting times, extending and improving the national breast screening programme and introducing bowel screening.

However, it is pointed out that much less attention has been paid to the problem of late diagnosis, which is starting to be addressed through the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI).

NAEDI is a public sector/third sector partnership that was announced in the Cancer Reform Strategy. Led by Professor Richards and Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK's chief executive, its role is to coordinate and provide support to activities that promote the earlier diagnosis of cancer.

Professor Mike Richards, National Cancer Director and author of the paper, said: "These delays in patients presenting with symptoms and cancer being diagnosed at a late stage inevitably cost lives. The situation is unacceptable so the first big step has been to understand why the delays occur.

"The next step for the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI) is to fix this problem. To do that we're working with people at a community level and with GPs to help them identify patients who could have cancer. On a wider scale, the government is committed to improving GPs' access to diagnostic tests.

"Cancer Research UK researchers also published a national survey for NAEDI, which revealed that 40 per cent of us would put off going to our doctor because we're worried about wasting their time. We now need to investigate the best ways to break down any barriers between GPs and patients and how to reduce delays in primary care.

"Early diagnosis is our next big challenge in cancer and will be crucial in bringing our survival rates up to the best in Europe."

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: "It's really important that people can recognise cancer symptoms and feel that they can report concerns to their GP at an early stage.

"When cancers are detected earlier, treatment is usually more effective and often milder. We're not expecting people to be able to recall every symptom, but being generally aware of changes that could be a sign of cancer could make a crucial difference for people who do develop the disease."

Ms Hiom noted that GPs are faced with a difficult task, with the average family doctor only seeing one case of each of the four biggest cancers each year.

"Many of the symptoms that could be cancer often turn out to be something less serious, but it's best to get things like unusual lumps, changes to moles, unusual bleeding or changes to bowel motions checked out by a GP," she added.

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Cancer Research UK shocked by survival study

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Cancer Research UK is calling on the government and PCTs across the country to act urgently after shocking new figures, out today (Tuesday), reveal a cancer patient’s chances of surviving for at least a year varies hugely depending on where they live.

The variation among primary care trusts (PCTs) was biggest for lung cancer survival, with patients in Herefordshire three times more likely to die within a year of diagnosis compared with patients in Kensington & Chelsea – according to the report published by the Department of Health.

And almost all PCTs failed to match the best survival rates in Europe. The figures confirm views expressed by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Director over the past two years that patients in the UK are, on average, being diagnosed at a much later stage, when specialist cancer treatments are least effective.

Whilst warmly welcoming the overall improvements in mortality and survival set out in the report, Cancer Research UK is urging PCTs to take the data on variability very seriously. The charity believes it is vital for cancer to be diagnosed earlier to give all patients the best chance of surviving.

Key facts in the report include:

* For bowel cancer, one year survival reached 80 per cent in Telford and Wrekin while the worst rates were seen in Waltham Forest and Hastings and Rother (58 per cent).

* In lung cancer, Kensington & Chelsea had the best survival rate of 44 per cent and the worst was Herefordshire with only 15 per cent.

* Breast cancer survival was 99 per cent in Torbay, and the worst was Tower Hamlets with one-year survival only 89 per cent.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “It’s thanks to the Cancer Reform Strategy and the work of the National Cancer Director that we now have this critical information available for the first time. However, these shocking statistics confirm that the cancer postcode lottery remains a real problem.

“Patients are undoubtedly not being diagnosed early enough in large parts of the country, nor are they getting equal access to the best treatments, such as surgery for lung cancer.

“There is no excuse for such a big difference between different areas. It is appalling that someone with lung cancer in Herefordshire should be three times more likely to die within a year than a patient in Kensington. Or that a person diagnosed with bowel cancer in Waltham Forest or Hastings should be 22 per cent more likely to die within a year than a patient in Telford. This is the worst kind of postcode lottery.

“It’s a disgrace that such a small proportion of PCTs have survival rates that match the best figures in Europe, or even the best rates in Europe ten years ago.

“This needs urgent action. We’re pleased that the Department of Health have been bold enough to publish these figures. The NHS now needs to take them very seriously.

“Cancer Research UK is already working with the NHS and the Department of Health on the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI), which now needs further investment to speed up its work. PCTs need to make earlier diagnosis a major priority and should set themselves goals for rapid improvement. We must set an aspiration that brings our survival rates up to the best in Europe in the next ten years. We can only achieve this by getting cancer diagnosed earlier.”

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Agressive prostate cancer test hope

Wednesday 23 September 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

CANCER RESEARCH UK scientists have discovered a molecular 'flag' that predicts survival from prostate cancer at diagnosis, reveals a study published in the British Journal of Cancer.

The research led by pathologists based at the University of Liverpool measured the levels of a protein called heat shock protein-27 (Hsp-27) in prostate tissue samples taken from 553 men at the time they were diagnosed with prostate cancer. During a 15-year follow-up, the research showed that those men who tested positive for Hsp-27 at diagnosis were almost twice as likely to die from prostate cancer, than men who did not have the protein.

These findings suggest that Hsp-27 could be used as a potential test to distinguish men with the aggressive forms of the cancer that need immediate treatment from men with slow-growing forms of prostate cancer, and with which they can live with for many years. At the moment, there are no reliable tests to make this distinction.

Lead author, Professor Chris Foster, a Cancer Research UK-funded scientist at the University of Liverpool's School of Cancer Studies, said: "We have identified a link between the presence of Hsp-27 at diagnosis and a lower survival rate for prostate cancer. Our study shows that this protein marker - currently found in tissue samples - can give us a reliable and accurate indication of whether individual cancers will become aggressive. Currently, we are working on developing this finding into a blood test to monitor men with prostate cancer in order to determine when their individual disease needs treatment."

Hsp-27 is a key component of signalling pathways that control the movement of cells around the body. The study also suggests that new drugs could be developed to block these signals and halt the spread of prostate cancer cells.

Professor Foster added: "If further research shows that blocking these cell message systems is successful, it could provide a new treatment for aggressive forms of prostate cancer."

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: "These results are an important step towards tackling the long-standing question of how to treat men with prostate cancer once it has been diagnosed. The need for treatment varies greatly between patients - men with non-aggressive cancer can live with it for many years without needing therapy, while aggressive cancers require prompt treatment with combinations of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But it is very difficult to distinguish who has which type of cancer.

"A marker molecule which identifies aggressive prostate cancer would help us target active treatment to patients who need it -avoiding unnecessary therapy, which can have side effects, to those who don’t.” She added: “The next stage would be to test this protein in large clinical trials to decide if how useful it could be for diagnosis or treatment."

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Vitamin D helps improve survival from bowel and skin cancer

Monday 21 September 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

New research shows higher levels of vitamin D may help improve survival for both bowel and skin cancer patients*.

The results of two studies published in the British Journal of Cancer and Journal of Clinical Oncology found people with higher levels of vitamin D - at the time they were diagnosed - were more likely to survive.

In the first study researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston followed 1017 bowel cancer patients for around nine years.

Using information about UV-B and sunlight exposure, skin type, body-mass index, and vitamin D intake from food and supplements they estimated the amount of vitamin D in patients' blood at the time of diagnosis.

The results showed that those with higher vitamin D scores after being diagnosed with cancer were 50 per cent less likely to die from the disease - compared to those with lower vitamin D scores.

Professor Kimmie Ng, study author, said: "Our study shows that levels of vitamin D after colorectal cancer diagnosis may be important for survival. We are now planning further research in patients with bowel cancer to see if vitamin D has the same effect, and to investigate how vitamin D works with molecular and genetic pathways in the cell to fight cancer."

The second study - funded by Cancer Research UK and the National Institutes of Health - found that malignant melanoma patients** with the lowest levels of vitamin D in their blood at the time they were diagnosed were 30 per cent more likely to relapse from the disease than those with the highest levels.

The researchers from Leeds also found that patients who have higher levels of vitamin D at diagnosis have thinner tumours at diagnosis.

Professor Julia Newton Bishop, study author at the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, said: "It's common for the general public to have low levels of vitamin D in many countries. Melanoma patients tend to avoid the sun as sunburn is known to increase the risk of melanoma. We use sunshine to make vitamin D in the skin, so melanoma patients' levels of vitamin D may be especially low.

"Our results suggest that melanoma patients may need to get vitamin D by eating fatty fish or by taking supplements to ensure they have normal levels. But we are continuing to carry out research to find out the optimum level of vitamin D. There's some evidence from other health studies that high levels of vitamin D are also harmful - so we should aim for a normal level rather than a very high one."

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Both these studies support the theory that higher levels of vitamin D can improve the chance of surviving cancer. The key is to get the right balance between the amount of time spent in the sun and the levels of vitamin D needed for good health.

"But protection from burning in the sun is still vital. Cancer Research UK's SunSmart campaign advises that people with lots of moles, red hair fair skin and a family history of the disease should take extra care in the sun as they are more at risk of the most dangerous form of skin cancer Anyone who is worried about changes in their moles should go to their GP."

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Nine in ten survive early stage bowel cancer

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Nine in ten people with bowel cancer that is caught early will survive the disease, according to new statistics published today (Tuesday).

Experts believe this shows how vital it is for people with possible symptoms to get them checked out so that any cancer can be diagnosed as early as possible.

They also say that this highlights the importance of taking part in bowel cancer screening when invited.

The latest figures are the first to be based on national statistics and are published by the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) and the Northern and Yorkshire Cancer Registry and Information Service (NYCRIS).

Doctors say that this good news is mainly because of improved surgical techniques.

Professor David Forman, director of NYCRIS and information lead for the NCIN, said: "It's really encouraging that more people with bowel cancer will now be successfully treated, if the disease is caught at the earliest stage.

"But overall, only half of people with bowel cancer survive, so this shows how crucial it is that the disease is spotted early.

"More than 80 per cent of bowel cancer cases occur in people over 60. Bowel cancer screening will be available across England for people in this age group by December 2009, and it can pick up changes that could be the earliest sign of cancer. Pilot screening programmes showed that over half of cancers detected through screening are at the earliest stage.

"So it is really important that people take part in screening when they’re sent the kit - it could save their life."

Paul Finan, bowel cancer surgeon and chair of the NCIN's bowel cancer group, said: "The reason why more people are surviving early stage bowel cancer than ever before is mostly because of many improvements in surgery. This includes using less invasive techniques, and patients receiving better care around the time of surgery - like more sophisticated anaesthetic care and better care during hospital admission and recovery."

The NCIN looked at every case of bowel cancer diagnosed in England between 1996 and 2006 and the percentage of people that survived for at least five years.

The survival figures were grouped together by each of the four stages of bowel cancer, known as Dukes A, B, C, and D, with A being the earliest stage of the disease.

Only around 13 per cent of bowel cancers are diagnosed at stage A, so it is important to find ways to increase this proportion, including through bowel cancer screening.

Around 34 per cent of cases were recorded without details of the stage of the disease.

Chris Carrigan, head of the NCIN, said: "This is the first of many reports that the NCIN will produce, some of which will include detailed statistics on cancer - like the stage of cancer - that have never been brought together on a national scale.

"We know that most cancers are more likely to be treated successfully if they are spotted early, so it's important that we have a way to measure if this is happening.

"Through information like this, we can help to improve cancer services. We can figure out which cancers are being diagnosed at a later stage and suggest policies and health campaigns to address these issues."

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Researchers find clues to improve breast cancer survival

Monday 8 June 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Checking lymph nodes during surgery and assessing the hormone status of tumours could help improve breast cancer survival in the UK, according to research published today in Annals of Oncology.

In a study of over 9,000 breast cancer patients* at 10 hospitals in the East of England researchers found that hospitals with a better average survival were those where surgeons checked lymph nodes during surgery in more than 90 per cent of patients.

Professor Stephen Duffy, Cancer Research UK professor of screening and study author, said: "We found that the proportion of women under 70 who had lymph node checks as recommended by NICE ranged from 81 per cent to 94 per cent with the hospitals with higher percentages having better survival."

The study also found that, for women over 70, having surgery to remove their tumour and checking the hormone type were the two main factors which explained survival differences between hospitals.

The hospitals showing better survival in the over 70s were those which assessed the hormone receptor status in more of their patients.

The team of researchers** from London and Cambridge compared breast cancer survival rates between 10 different hospitals across eastern England.

For women under 70 the five year relative survival rates ranged from 85 to 90 per cent. And for those over 70 the survival rate was between 65 and 75 per cent.***

The figures are close to the highest rates in Europe**** but the researchers believe that survival could be even better if all hospitals closely followed the existing surgical guidelines.

Professor Duffy continued: "Although survival rates for breast cancer are very good in hospitals we studied in the East of England, rivalling the best in Europe, we have found that there is still room for improvement.

"One reason why survival varied between the hospitals for women under 70 was whether they had their lymph nodes removed and examined. Another is screening as we know from previous studies that women have a much better chance of survival if their tumour is picked up at an early stage. We would encourage all women to attend screening when invited."

The researchers also found that more women older than 70 are surviving the disease if they have surgery. Another important factor for this group of women was whether the cancer's hormone type was assessed at diagnosis. The researchers believe that with more hospitals following the guidelines on hormone receptor typing, there would be further improvements in survival.

Professor Gordon Wishart, the leading author on the study said: "Lymph node staging and hormone receptor typing give valuable information to decide on optimal treatment after surgery. As more hospitals follow current professional guidelines and carry out these investigations, more effective treatment will follow and patient survival is likely to improve even further."

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: "It's very encouraging to see that at their best, results from the UK are the equal of those in Europe. The real challenge is to make sure that consistently high standards are met in all hospitals, so that every patient can benefit from the significant improvements in survival we have made."

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Trial results show better survival for gallbladder and bile duct cancer

Tuesday 2 June 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Combining two chemotherapy drugs for advanced gallbladder and bile duct cancer improves survival by a third, according to results from a Cancer Research UK funded trial presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference*.

The trial, run by the Cancer Research UK & UCL Cancer Trials Centre**, was the largest ever phase III clinical trial for these cancers. They found that for patients receiving both gemcitabine and cisplatin it reduced the chance of the cancer growing by 28 per cent.

Also, patients given this combination of drugs lived longer - on average 11.7 months compared to 8.3 months for those on the trial receiving gemcitabine alone.

The trial, called ABC02, recruited over 400 UK patients with advanced gallbladder and bile duct cancer which can’t be operated on. One group had a combination of gemcitabine and cisplatin and the second group were treated with gemcitabine alone. The treatment lasted for 24 weeks for both groups of patients.

Gallbladder and bile duct cancers are rare and very difficult to treat in the advanced stages. Of those diagnosed with the disease only around one in 10 will survive for more than five years.

Dr Juan Valle, consultant oncologist at The Christie in Manchester and co chief investigator for the trial***, said: "This important trial has shown that adding cisplatin to gemcitabine slowed cancer progression and extended survival for these rare but hard-to-treat cancers, with minimal side effects. This establishes the combination treatment cisplatin and gemcitabine as an international standard of care for patients with advanced gallbladder and bile duct cancers.

"If gallbladder cancer is picked up early, the best treatment is an operation to remove it. But often the disease isn’t detected in time as there are few symptoms in the early stages. This makes it vital to find the best chemotherapy treatment for people in this situation."

The trial started in May 2005 and finished in September 2008.

Kate Law, director of clinical trials at Cancer Research UK, said: "Treating advanced gallbladder and bile duct cancer is very difficult and these results make us hopeful of adding precious extra months to a person’s life. We are committed to find new treatments for patients with rare and hard to treat cancers and hope these trial results will improve the way these cancers are treated across the world."

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Cancer 'revolution' will improve survival rates

Tuesday 19 May 2009

A revolution over the next 20 years will see cancer become a chronic disease, the Daily Express reports.

According to Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartnersUK, the next two decades will see a shift in attitudes towards cancer as more effective treatments for the disease are made available.

He believes a treatment "revolution" will result in cancer being viewed as a long-term chronic illness like asthma, heart disease and diabetes, rather than a terminal condition.

In an article for Scrip News, Professor Sikora said that over time we will "simply run out of things from which to die" thanks to improved cancer care borne out of technological advancements and increased public pressure to find a cure.

"Within 20 years cancer will be a chronic disease, joining conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma," he said.

What's more, he envisages progress being made across the board rather in specific cancer areas.

"The model of prostate cancer, where many men die with it rather than from it, will be common for most cancers," he commented.

Professor Sikora's view is backed up by Hazel Nunn, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, who said she expects the rate of advancement to continue at a similar level to that currently seen.

"In recent decades cancer survival has been improving dramatically - and we're entering an exciting new age of cancer research that will ensure these trends are set to continue," Ms Nunn confirmed.

"Advances made in recent years mean we know more than ever about cancer and its causes, leading to better prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

"Research has been crucial to increasing cancer survival and it's vital that we keep the momentum going to help even more people beat the disease in future."

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Cancer survival data 'encouraging', say Cancer Research UK

Friday 20 March 2009

The latest data on UK cancer survival show that England's cancer plan is a step in the right direction, Cancer Research UK believes.

An article in the Lancet Oncology represents the first study to assess the impact of the NHS cancer plan for England since its introduction in 2000.

At that time, Britain had one of the poorest levels of cancer survival in Europe and the plan was designed to improve five-year survival rates so that England is on a par with the best in Europe by 2010.

For the purposes of the latest study, Wales has been used to measure the effectiveness of the English cancer plan as it did not adopt its own plan until 2006.

Researchers at the Cancer Research UK Cancer Survival Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analysed both national and regional survival rates among 2.2 million adults diagnosed with 21 common cancers in England and Wales up to 2007.

The figures show that one-year survival improved for most cancers in both England and Wales between 1996 and 2006.

One-year survival improved slightly faster in Wales between 1996 and 2003 - a trend that is thought to be due to Welsh clinicians acting on recommendations contained in the Cameron report published in 1996 - but this trend was reversed after 2004.

In England, survival trends have improved for cancers of the stomach, bowel, rectum, womb, ovary and kidney since 2001. However, there has been a fall in survival for bladder cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma and leukaemia.

Three-year survival figures show no significant difference between England and Wales up until 2003. Since then, England has achieved a slightly faster increase in survival.

However, the study authors note that despite overall improvements in three-year survival in England, there are still regional variations, with the more affluent southern regions tending to enjoy higher-than-average survival.

They suggest that the improvements seen in England since 2004 may be related to the cancer plan and have called for further studies to investigate the impact of individual aspects of the cancer plan on survival, including reductions in waiting times and the creation of multidisciplinary teams.

The researchers also note that predicted three-year survival for cancers diagnosed in 2007 in England are generally higher than for 2004-06, "suggesting that survival is likely to continue to increase".

"In contrast," they note, "there are fewer predicted improvements in survival in Wales."

Overall, the team concludes that the findings "suggest some beneficial effect of the NHS cancer plan for England, although the data do not so far provide a definitive assessment of the effectiveness of the plan".

National cancer director for England Professor Mike Richards commented on the study, saying that while other measures should also be taken into account when assessing the effectiveness of a national cancer plan, survival rates are "extremely valuable measures of progress".

"The good news from the study by Rachet and colleagues is that, for most cancers, survival has improved over the past decade in both countries," he pointed out.

Commenting on the differences in survival trends between England and Wales in 2001-03 and 2004-06, Professor Richards suggests: "A plausible explanation...is that Wales moved forward faster in the early years as a result of the Cameron report, with England catching up and overtaking as a result of the cancer plan.

"This interpretation would suggest that cancer strategies backed by effective implementation plans have worked in both countries, but at different times."

Sara Hiom, Cancer Research UK's director of health information, said: "This is the first indication that the cancer plan could be moving cancer survival in the right direction. This is exciting news but we need to take a more in-depth look to see which parts of the plan have had the most positive impact and which parts require more action.

"Survival rates will improve with earlier cancer diagnosis and it is encouraging to see these generally improving since 2000. We think around 5,000 extra deaths annually may occur in the UK because of delayed diagnosis.

"Cancer Research UK is working with the Department of Health and National Cancer Action Team to further improve cancer survival and reduce mortality through the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI)."

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Detailed diagnosis boosts child cancer survival

Friday 6 March 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

More accurate disease classification now means some young children with neuroblastoma will have less intensive treatment with better survival, according to research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology*.

In a pan-European trial, researchers found that screening the tumours of children under the age of one with advanced neuroblastoma for a gene called MYCN could save them from unnecessary chemotherapy.

The number of MYCN genes are known to be increased in about 25 per cent of neuroblastomas. Tumours with increased numbers of this gene behave much more aggressively.

In this trial, 96 per cent of patients whose neuroblastoma had spread to distant parts of the body but did not have the amplified gene survived five years or more with little or no treatment.

Neuroblastoma affects around 90 children each year in the UK and across the board, five year survival rates are around 60 per cent. Around 30 children under the age of one are diagnosed with neuroblastoma each year in the UK.

The study was led by Cancer Research UK's Professor of Paediatric Oncology Professor Andy Pearson at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton with Dr Mary Gerrard at Sheffield Children's Hospital and conducted by researchers from the International Society of Paediatric Oncology Europe Neuroblastoma Group (SIOPEN) and the Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG).

They treated 170 babies from nine European countries with neuroblastoma that had spread to distant parts of the body - but who did not have the amplified MYCN gene in their tumours.

These children were treated with up to four courses of chemotherapy. Some children were treated with surgery first if their doctors felt they needed it.

Previously, these children would have been treated with up to 12 courses of chemotherapy.

Professor Pearson said: "This is very positive news for babies with this type of neuroblastoma. We saw an excellent outcome in the children we treated who were spared extra therapy and the side effects that come with it. Chemotherapy can cause children to feel tired, sick and make it more likely they'll pick up infections, so it's very important to avoid this where possible. Our current goal is to individualise or personalise treatment for children with neuroblastoma."

The results of this trial suggest that less intense chemotherapy should be given to this group of babies.

Kate Law, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical trials, said: "Overall, survival rates for children’s cancers have been rapidly improving over the past three decades. But it's crucial we support trials like this to refine treatments and reduce the long-term side effects that curative therapies can sometimes cause.

"This study confirms the importance of understanding the personal biology of individual patients in creating successful, tailored treatment regimes."

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Hormone injections improve survival in premenopausal breast cancer patients

Thursday 26 February 2009

Cancer Research UK scientists and their colleagues have shown that treatment with a hormone called goserelin improves long-term survival in premenopausal women with early breast cancer.

Goserelin acts by blocking the production of sex hormones, including oestrogen, which can fuel certain types of breast cancer. It is given in the form of injections.

Previous research has suggested that such hormone therapies may cut deaths and prevent cancer coming back in premenopausal women with the disease.

However, the latest study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute is thought to be the first to investigate the long-term impact of goserelin and its effectiveness in comparison to the oestrogen-blocking drug tamoxifen.

Researchers at the Cancer Research UK Trials Centre at University College London recruited 2,706 premenopausal women with breast cancer.

The women were placed randomly in one of four treatment groups - receiving either goserelin (Zoladex), tamoxifen, both drugs or neither drug - for two years.

The researchers found that women who were given goserelin experienced similar outcomes to those who took tamoxifen.

Fifteen years after the start of treatment, there had been 13.9 fewer recurrences per 100 women among those who were given goserelin alone than among those who took neither drug.

There were also 8.5 fewer deaths per 100 women among those who received goserelin on its own than among those who took neither drug.

Women did not benefit significantly from taking both drugs.

The researchers wrote: "In summary, long-term follow-up of our large trial showed that goserelin had a demonstrable effect on survival and recurrence 15 years after starting treatment and is as effective as tamoxifen when each are given for two years.

"It may be that women who are unlikely to complete five years of tamoxifen tablets may prefer two years of goserelin injections."

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Cancer survival improving in deprived areas

Thursday 26 February 2009

Cancer survival is improving in the most deprived areas of England, according to new figures published by the Office for National Statistics.

Although survival in the most deprived populations - known as the Spearhead group of primary care trusts (PCTs) - is still lower than in the rest of England, there have been definite improvements.

Survival across the 62 Spearhead PCTs improved to a greater extent than in other PCTs between 1998 and 2004, meaning that the gap between the most and least health-deprived areas has narrowed.

The data reveal that the most marked improvements were for prostate cancer, one-year survival for which rose from 89.6 per cent to 91.5 per cent, while five-year survival increased from 70.5 per cent to 75.4 per cent.

This means that prostate cancer survival in Spearhead PCTs is now similar to that found in the rest of England.

One-year survival for breast cancer rose from 93.4 per cent among patients diagnosed between 1998 and 2002 to 94.1 per cent among those diagnosed between 2000 and 2004.

Five-year survival for breast cancer in Spearhead PCTs was 80.5 per cent by the end of 2004, compared with 81.2 per cent for the rest of the nation's PCTs.

Lung cancer survival has also improved - from 24.2 per cent to 25.4 per cent among men, and from 26.5 per cent to 28.2 per cent in women.

Meanwhile one-year survival from oesophageal cancer among men rose from 28.8 per cent to 31.8 per cent.

Catherine Thomson, head of statistical information at Cancer Research UK, said: "It's reassuring that some progress has been made to reduce the gap between affluent and deprived areas, but more work is needed.

"People in deprived areas may be more likely to take up unhealthy habits, like smoking and being overweight, and they may also present symptoms to their doctor later, making their cancers harder to treat successfully.

"Cancer Research UK is working with the Department of Health on the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative to promote the early diagnosis of cancer in all communities. This is to help ensure that everyone has an equal chance of beating cancer regardless of where they live."

The figures were produced in collaboration with a team partially funded by Cancer Research UK at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

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Chemotherapy boosts survival rates for pancreatic cancer

Wednesday 21 January 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

The use of chemotherapy following surgery reduces the risk of death from operable pancreatic cancer by around 30 per cent, says new research published in the British Journal of Cancer* today.

The new research, funded by Cancer Research UK, shows that patients who had surgery and chemotherapy with a drug called 5FU alongside folinic acid, had a five year survival rate of 24 per cent. This was compared to 14 per cent for those who only had surgery.

The researchers used the results of three clinical trials undertaken by The European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer (ESPAC) to compare data of over 450 patients.

The study confirms the results of previous research which suggests patients who had surgery and chemotherapy had better a chance of survival than patients who only had surgery.

Professor John Neoptolemos, lead researcher based at the University of Liverpool, said: "Pancreatic cancer continues to be one of the hardest cancers to treat and has very low survival rates.

"These results show that chemotherapy after surgery is the best way to treat patients, giving people precious extra months or even years of life.

"There is still a long way to go before we can really reduce the number of people that die from the disease but this research moves us in the right direction. The next step will be to investigate different combinations of drugs to see if they work any better than this treatment."

Kate Law, director of clinical trials at Cancer Research UK, said: "In the past it has been unclear what the best way to treat pancreatic cancer is. But, these results reinforce previous trial findings and show undoubtedly that chemotherapy after surgery offers the best hope for patients who have operable pancreatic cancer.

"Cancer Research UK recently launched a five year strategy to specifically target cancers with poor survival rates such as pancreatic cancer.

"Huge advancements have been made in beating cancer over the past thirty years. But progress has been faster in some areas than others. The strategy focuses our attention on those areas which will have the greatest impact on reducing cancer deaths in the future and on achieving our goals."

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UK survival for children's bone cancer lowest in Western Europe

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Survival for childhood bone cancer is slightly lower in the UK than in any other Western European country, according to research published in the British Journal of Cancer* today (Wednesday).

Although five-year survival from childhood cancer in the UK has now reached 75 per cent, and for some types of cancer survival is over 90 per cent, survival for osteosarcoma - the most common type of childhood bone cancer - has not improved in the last 20 years, remaining at about 60 per cent.

The researchers, funded by the Bone Cancer Research Trust, believe that this could be due to later diagnosis of the disease and different ways of treating osteosarcoma in the UK.

The study, which looked at all cases of childhood bone cancer between 1981 and 2000 in northern England and the West Midlands, found that around 60 per cent of patients survived five years or more.

Around 65 per cent of childhood osteosarcoma patients survive a diagnosis of the disease across the rest of Western Europe. Eastern Europe had a lower survival figure than the UK of around 43 per cent.

Dr Richard McNally, lead author based at Newcastle University, said: "Our statistics suggest that the UK has slightly lower overall survival rates for osteosarcoma than other countries in Western Europe.

"We know that treatment options for this disease vary across Europe. For example, a child diagnosed with osteosarcoma in the UK may be given a different course of treatment to a patient in Germany, where they tend to be given a more intense course of radiotherapy and surgery."

"Since 1997, specialists in the UK have been working with their counterparts across Europe to standardise and improve the treatment and management of children with cancer. Nowadays nearly all trials involving British patients have been developed in collaboration with European colleagues and are open across many European countries - so we hope to see survival rates improving in the future."

Professor Tim Eden - Teenage Cancer Trust's Professor of Teenage and Young Adult Cancer - and co-author of the study, said: "It's important that collaboration in cancer research continues so that UK survival for osteosarcoma catches up with the rest of Europe. Delays in diagnosis may also be contributing to the difference in survival and it's crucial that more research is carried out to confirm if this is the case."

Professor Ian Lewis of the Scientific Advisory Panel for the Bone Cancer Research Trust, which funded this study, said: "The results from the UK are obviously of real concern and emphasise why it is so important to fund research aimed at improving our understanding about this and to develop new treatments. The Bone Cancer Research Trust is a new charity formed with exactly these aims. We must not be happy with second best."

Kate Law, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical trials, said: "Overall, seven out of ten children with cancer are now successfully treated, compared with less than three out of ten in the 1960s. Research like this is crucial in helping to identify areas where we need to make improvements to ensure every child with cancer receives the best treatment.

"We know that the best way of improving survival for children with cancer is through research and supporting clinical trials. Cancer Research UK is the largest funder of children’s cancer research in the UK, and we are committed to ensuring these differences in survival are addressed. We need to invest more in international clinical trials to establish the best treatments for bone cancer and we are committed to curing cancer in all children, while minimising the long term physical and psychological side effects they sometimes experience with treatment."

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'Incurable' cancers receive more investment in Cancer Research UK's £1.5 billion science strategy

Friday 28 November 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Cancer Research UK today launched an ambitious five-year plan which will see the charity spend around £300 million a year on core areas of science to reduce cancer deaths - including greater investment in those areas where survival rates remain poor.

The charity will continue to support areas of work in which it has been world-leading for decades - the highest quality laboratory and population-based research programmes to improve our understanding of all cancers - and innovative translational and clinical research to drive scientific discoveries towards improving survival.

In the next five years, improvements in early detection and screening will be specifically targeted, enabling doctors to diagnose cancer earlier when it has a better chance of being successfully treated.

Cancer Research UK will establish up to 20 'Centres of excellence' across the UK - linking research activities with patient care, public engagement and prevention initiatives. Each centre will develop a distinct research strategy and will be encouraged to develop key areas of focus in which it will be world-class. Most of these Centres will be launched in 2009.

The charity will also continue to deliver information to the public about cancer prevention, detection and treatment - and will maintain its influence to drive public policy change, where this will help improve survival.

Cancer Research UK's chief executive Harpal Kumar, said: "Huge progress has been made in beating cancer over the past thirty years, both through reducing the number of people getting cancer in the first place and through doubling survival. This has had a significant impact on reducing the number of cancer deaths - and Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of this. But progress has been faster in some areas than others. This strategy focuses our attention on those areas which will have the greatest impact on reducing cancer deaths in the future and on achieving our goals."

Cancer Research UK is, and will remain, the largest funder of research into most cancers in the UK - including breast, prostate, lung, bowel and children's cancers. Survival rates have improved for almost all of the common cancers and in many cancer types the progress has been dramatic. Breast cancer now has a twenty year survival rate of nearly 70 per cent. Testicular cancer, melanoma and Hodgkin's disease now all have ten year survival rates of over 80 per cent. But only around five per cent* of those with pancreatic, oesophageal or lung cancer will survive for this long.

Cancer Research UK already carries out significant research in these fields, but prognosis remains poor. The charity has started to promote increased research activity in these cancers by seeking advice from leading experts from across the world to highlight which areas would benefit most from Cancer Research UK’s investment. The outcomes of these discussions will form the basis of major new initiatives to tackle both pancreatic and oesophageal cancer - and a commitment to increase further our funding in lung cancer research - the UK's biggest cancer killer.

Harpal Kumar said: "In these three cancers, there has been a degree of nihilism and even a defeatist attitude around the world, which has led to limited research activity. However, these are top ten cancers in terms of mortality in the UK and progress can and is being made. It is our responsibility to do more."

In addition, Cancer Research UK has pledged to boost research investment in surgery and radiotherapy - which along with chemotherapy are the most important approaches to cancer treatment. Research into new radiotherapy and surgical techniques has declined in recent years. Over the next five years, Cancer Research UK will take steps to correct this by making these disciplines a key focus for the Cancer Research UK Centres.

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: "Cancer treatment is increasingly tailored to the individual patient. Through our investments in imaging and biomarker research we will accelerate this process, to maximise the chance of success with an individual patient's treatment and minimise the wasted time, side effects and costs that result from inappropriate treatment. Tailoring treatment in this way presents us with enormous opportunities as well as challenges. This ambitious research strategy puts us in a position to take on these tougher scientific challenges."

Cancer Research UK's plans also place further emphasis on quality and impact. Professor Johnson continued: "Through our partnerships with the NHS, the UK already leads the world in cancer clinical trials. This isn't just about having more patients take part in trials than any other country, but also about making sure those trials really lead to changes in the way cancer medicine is practiced, both here and across the world. Our work over the years has helped set the standard for how patients with breast, bowel, ovarian and other cancers are now treated. This is because, across the entire range of our research, we carefully test all the ideas that researchers put forward, to ensure that the work we fund really is at the international forefront and is not duplicating work being done elsewhere. It is one thing to have interesting research ideas, but it's vital to make sure that work we support will really make an impact in practice."

In order to deliver on the strategy, the charity will continue to invest in developing world-class cancer researchers for the future and in attracting to the UK the very best scientific minds from around the world.

Harpal Kumar added: "Over the years, Cancer Research UK has been involved in the training of almost all of the medical oncologists now practising in the UK. We will build on our achievements and promote innovative and interdisciplinary research across all of our research activities and institutes - by providing the right environment for research, and the right people to do it.

"This bold five year strategy aims to reduce the number of people dying from cancer - particularly those who suffer from some of the hardest forms of the disease to treat successfully - lung, pancreatic and oesophageal cancers.

"Focusing our efforts in this way will ensure that Cancer Research UK has the infrastructure in place to take the promising scientific discoveries of recent years into clinical practice to benefit the public."

Harpal Kumar concluded: "We will make the greatest impact in the fight against cancer by working in partnership with other research organisations and the government of the day. But it’s only through the generosity of our supporters that we will be able to fund this work - we receive virtually no funding from Government. Now, more than ever, we need people to support us in our vision to beat cancer."

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Tackling cancer delays will boost british survival

Friday 21 November 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Cancer Research UK today reveals that as many as 11,000 deaths from cancer could be prevented annually if Great Britain raised its survival figures to match those of the best performing countries in Europe.

Cancer Research UK and national cancer director, Professor Mike Richards, believe that the most important reasons for the survival gap include poor awareness of the symptoms of cancer, late presentation to a GP and, late onward referral to hospital.

The new data will be presented today (Friday) at the launch of the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI), which aims to help correct this imbalance and reduce the number of people needlessly dying from cancer in Britain. NAEDI is being chaired jointly by Professor Richards and Harpal Kumar, the chief executive of Cancer Research UK.

Researchers studied survival rates in Great Britain and 13 other European countries. They looked at the figures for 39 different types of cancer and broke the data down by age and sex. They then drew comparisons with the best survival rates and the average survival rates in Europe.

The results show that if our survival rates were as good as the European average, there would have been 6,500 fewer deaths annually - within five years of diagnosis - for cancer patients diagnosed between 1995 and 1999.

And if our rates were as good as the best in Europe, this would equate to around 11,000 fewer deaths in cancer patients each year. But some progress has already been made. In the late eighties, this figure was 12,000 avoidable deaths. And recent improvements in treatments suggest that Britain has made further gains compared to the rest of Europe.

Previous research suggests that cancer patients in this country tend to be diagnosed at a later stage than those in the rest of Europe. And experts believe that this is a key reason for the lower survival rates.

Lead researcher, Professor Michel Coleman explained: "Sadly, we know that many cases of cancer are being diagnosed too late in Britain and this is a major reason for our poor survival rates.

“Our research suggests that if we could make further improvements in this area we could save thousands more lives each year."

Professor Richards said: "We know that cancer treatment in Britain has improved vastly in recent years and we are now beginning to see the impact on our survival rates. But we’ve still got work to do if we're going to catch up with the rest of Europe.

"I believe that if we can tackle delays in diagnosing cancer, we will be able to save thousands more lives in the future."

Harpal Kumar said: "These figures highlight the scale of the challenge and the opportunity we face.

"We know that cancers are often being picked up too late and we could make an enormous difference if we could speed the process up.

"We hope that the range of measures we're launching today through the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative will at last redress the balance."

NAEDI is being launched at a special conference today. The aims of the initiative include: 

• understanding levels of awareness of cancer symptoms, 
• providing clear messages on the signs and symptoms of cancer, 
• encouraging people to go to the doctor with possible signs of cancer, 
• understanding and tackling delays in primary care, 
• evaluating research that has already been done and spotting any gaps, 
• research comparing survival with other countries, and 
• conducting new research into raising awareness and promoting early diagnosis.

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Therapy reduces death from anal cancer by a third

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

A CANCER RESEARCH UK trial has shown anal cancer patients who received a different form of treatment were a third less likely to die in the long term from anal cancer, according to long-term survival data presented at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference, today (Tuesday).

Researchers from the Cancer Research UK and UCL (University College London) cancer trials centre undertook a six -year trial of 577 patients with anal cancer - who were then monitored for an average of 13 years.

Around half the patients on the trial received the standard treatment for anal cancer, radiotherapy alone - while the other half received a new form of treatment which combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment (CRT).

Twelve years after the trial had finished 34 per cent of patients treated with chemo-radiation suffered a relapse of the anal cancer compared with 59 per cent of the group who received radiotherapy alone (a difference of 25 per cent).

This long term follow-up data confirms the earlier trial results published in 1996 and overall they now show a 33 per cent reduction in anal cancer deaths and a 54 per cent reduction in cases of the cancer returning to the same area, in the group which received CRT.

Overall, the trial results confirm that CRT should be the standard treatment for patients with anal cancer worldwide.

There are around 850 cases of anal cancer diagnosed in the UK each year. In 2006, there were 239 deaths from the disease in UK. Most patients have evidence of HPV infection in the anal area - the same HPV 16 and 18 strains which cause cervical cancer.

People who have receptive anal intercourse are more at risk and slightly more women than men are affected.

Professor Jonathan Ledermann, director of Cancer Research UK and UCL cancer trials centre, said: "The trial found that combined chemo-radiation therapy provides clear and sustained benefit for anal cancer patients. The long-term follow up of this trial confirms the magnitude of the benefit seen in the first years after therapy is still maintained for more than a decade."

Of the 577 trial participants, 285 received radiotherapy alone over four to five weeks. Separately 292 patients received the same therapy combined with chemotherapy. Chemotherapy comprised administration of 5-fluorouracil, during the first and last weeks of radiotherapy, as well as a single dose of mitomycin C on day one of the therapy.

Professor Roger James, clinical director of the Kent and Medway Cancer Network, presenting the trial results at the NCRI conference, said: "This trial outcome is an enormously positive result and a benchmark by which to set improvement in care and therapy for cancer patients."

Kate Law, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical trials, said: "The results from this trial are striking and have improved the way this cancer is treated across the globe to greatly reduce deaths from anal cancer.

"There are ongoing Cancer Research UK-funded trials investigating different ways to administer chemotherapy to further improve patient treatment and care. We are also keen to raise awareness of this disease to high risk groups which include gay and bisexual men so they are aware of the causes and take action if they have symptoms. Early detection is crucial for a successful outcome."

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Chance of surviving gut cancers up 40 per cent in two decades

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Cancer patients in England are 40 per cent more likely to survive for at least a year after diagnosis of stomach and oesophageal cancer than they were in the eighties, according to latest figures revealed at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Birmingham today (Tuesday).

Experts say that one important factor in this significant increase in survival is improved early diagnosis of these cancers, which is important for treatment to be successful. Stomach and oesophageal cancers have been hard to diagnose as the symptoms of the diseases are often a sign of conditions other than cancer.

Improvements in treatment have also played a part, including the shift to surgery by experts in specialist centres and the introduction of chemotherapy for advanced disease.

The figures also show that early detection of breast cancer has led to 95 per cent of patients surviving for more than one year following diagnosis.

The report, published by the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN), looked at one-year survival for all cancers* in over 3.5 million cancer patients recorded by English cancer registries between 1985 and 2004.

Despite more people being diagnosed with cancer in England since the 1980s - due to the ageing population - there has been a fall in the number of deaths. In the five years in the late 1980s, around 840,000** people were diagnosed with cancer and 56 per cent survived beyond a year after diagnosis. In the five years from 2000, over a million people were diagnosed in a five year period with the disease, but 67 per cent survived beyond a year.

Professor David Forman, information lead at the NCIN based at the University of Leeds, said: "Increases in one-year survival rates are a useful signpost - for many types of cancer, they suggest that the disease is being diagnosed at an earlier stage, which is vitally important in treating the disease successfully.

"It's really positive that survival rates for stomach and oesophageal cancer have significantly increased, because they're cancers that are usually diagnosed very late - too late to cure."

One year survival for stomach cancer went from 27 per cent in the 80s to 38 per cent in the 00s - an increase of 11 per cent. And one year survival for oesophageal cancer went from 25 to 36 per cent in the same period.

In addition, one-year survival for all of the most common cancers increased significantly in twenty years. Although survival did not decrease for any cancer***, rates for cervix, Hodgkin disease and a group including eye, brain and CNS cancers stayed relatively constant.

Marked increases in survival were also seen for breast, ovary and bowel cancer.

Professor Forman continued: "One-year survival has significantly increased for around 75 per cent of cancers. Most of the rest have shown small improvements but clearly there is more work needed to improve the detection of some cancers."

One-year breast cancer survival has increased by six per cent in the last two decades, meaning 95 per cent of women will survive at least a year after diagnosis. This is a clear indication of greater awareness of the disease in patients and GPs, leading to faster referrals of cancer patients to specialist doctors. And the breast cancer screening programme has helped pick up the disease earlier - survival rates jumped in the early 90s following the introduction of the screening programme in 1988.

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Early detection of cancer is vital in ensuring the disease is successfully treated. It's important that people are aware of the signs and symptoms of cancer and they go for screening when invited. Cancer Research UK is investing in research to improve early detection of the disease and is working with GPs to provide relevant information to help this."

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Breast cancer survival is up but poor still lag behind the rich

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Long-term breast cancer survival continues to rise among women from all backgrounds but a worrying survival gap between poor and affluent women still remains - say leading statisticians.

One year after diagnosis survival was worse for deprived breast cancer patients than affluent. And this "deprivation gap" between the two social groups doubled five years after diagnosis.

The study looked at more than 380,000 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer in England and Wales between 1986-1999. Even after adjusting for other causes of death, the five-year survival of women with breast cancer who lived in the most affluent areas was consistently about six per cent higher than for women who lived in deprived areas.

The survival figures are part of a detailed analysis of cancer survival published today in the British Journal of Cancer (BJC)*.

For the first time each article in the survival supplement is twinned with an expert commentary from a leading UK specialist who treats the particular cancer under discussion. In several cases researchers and clinicians disagree about the reasons for survival inequalities.

Such a debate should lead to better understanding of the persistent inequalities in cancer survival between rich and poor patients - according to Professor Michel Coleman, Cancer Research UK epidemiologist and senior author of the survival articles in the supplement.

The research comes just a week ahead of Breast Cancer Awareness Month which provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the disease as well as an annual fund-raising platform for breast cancer throughout October.

While overall survival continues to improve for the majority of adult cancers there is a notable difference between those from affluent backgrounds and those from deprived backgrounds.

Researchers have found that this deprivation gap in survival exists for most cancers but the gap does not generally widen between one-year survival and 5-10 year survival. Breast cancer is a notable exception.

The study looked at survival for the 20 most common cancers diagnosed in England and Wales over a 14 year period from 1986 to 1999 and patients were followed up to the end of 2001. Results were based on data for 2.2 million cancer patients.

Professor Coleman said: "Deprived women have lower breast cancer survival than affluent women in the period soon after diagnosis. But we have seen this actually double between one and five-year survival."

Prof Coleman suggests that some of the reasons why the deprivation gap in survival becomes wider with time since diagnosis may include lower take-up of radiotherapy, which leads to a higher risk of late recurrence of breast cancer, and problems with access to chemotherapy or hormone therapy. Differences, between affluent and deprived women in access to the life-prolonging drug, tamoxifen, may also have been a contributory factor for women diagnosed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

For most cancers survival up to 10 years has improved significantly between those diagnosed in the mid 1980s and the late 1990s. But there was almost no change in survival for lung, pancreatic, cervical and bladder cancer.

Expert clinicians commenting on the results suggested that greater public awareness, early detection, better treatment and multi-disciplinary teams were all reasons for improved survival in many cancers.

Clinicians also suggested that the continuing deprivation gap in survival between the more affluent and more deprived patients could be due to patients living in deprived areas having other life-threatening diseases.

In contrast the other researchers ascribed the reasons to later diagnosis and, for some cancers, poor access to adequate treatment.

Regarding improved survival in both testicular and malignant melanoma, clinicians praised public awareness campaigns, such as Cancer Research UK's SunSmart campaign, which had helped to make people more aware of the signs and symptoms of cancer leading to earlier presentation, earlier diagnosis and improved survival.

Professor Mike Richards, National Cancer Director, highlighted differences of opinion between clinicians and epidemiologists in finding reasons for the survival deprivation gap.

He said: "In general clinicians were likely to attribute the deprivation gap in survival mainly to the fact that people from poorer backgrounds had other diseases as well as cancer. By contrast statisticians put more emphasis on late diagnosis in deprived groups as a cause for poorer survival.

"These differences of opinion highlight the need for high quality information on the details of cancer staging and additional diseases to be collected by clinical teams and made available to the cancer registries."

For media enquiries please contact the Cancer Research UK press office on 020 7061 8300 or, out of hours, the duty press officer on 07050 264059.

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Teen cancer survival on the rise, but more work needed

Tuesday 19 August 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

The first national report detailing survival for teenagers and young adults with cancer shows that survival rates climbed by around 11 per cent over two decades.

The findings, published in the British Journal of Cancer* today (Tuesday), looked at survival across all cancers in people aged 13 to 24 between 1979 and 2001.

Previously, statistical information about cancers in people in this age group has been limited, as patients were treated as either a child or adult. Before now, the importance of classing young people as a separate group was not recognised.

It is now understood that the spectrum of cancers affecting young people is different from children and adults and their physical, social and educational needs are also unique.

This report, funded by Cancer Research UK, will serve as a baseline for monitoring and guiding health policy geared towards developing specialised cancer care for teenagers and young people.

Lead author, Professor Jillian Birch, director of Cancer Research UK's Paediatric and Familial Cancer Research Group at The University of Manchester, said: "We found that survival for teenagers and young people with cancer improved overall from 63 per cent between 1979 and 1984 to 74 per cent between 1996 and 2001, which is great news. But more needs to be done to drive this figure even higher.

"It's important that cancer services are tailored to suit teenagers and young adults, as their needs differ from older adults and children - clinically and psychologically. Research like this is needed to measure how much of an impact this tailored treatment could have."

The researchers analysed five-year survival in more than 30,000 13 to 24 year olds diagnosed with cancer in England between 1979 and 2001, and followed them up to 2003.

The greatest increase in survival rates was seen for leukaemia, which increased by 21 per cent over the 23 years studied. But survival for brain tumours, bone cancers and soft tissue sarcomas hasn't changed significantly since the mid-1980s.

Professor Birch added: "Our research has also identified cancers where survival rates remain poor, highlighting the need for continuing research in those areas to drive up survival."

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Research like this is vital if we are to measure the impact of changes to the way teenagers with cancer are treated. Recruiting more young people onto clinical trials - which has been a priority for childhood cancer - will help this.

"It's important that this group of patients receive the most appropriate treatment, and Cancer Research UK will continue investing in research to work towards this goal."

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'Massive' increase in cancer survival

Wednesday 16 July 2008

Two million people are currently living with or surviving after cancer in the UK - nearly double the previous estimate of 1.2 million, according to research from King's College London's Thames Cancer Registry.

The study suggests that services for long-term survivors of cancer need to improve as the number of cancer cases is rising while the number of deaths is falling.

The prevalence of cancer in England is currently increasing at a rate of 3.2 per cent per year, according to the figures, and this trend is expected to continue over the coming years as a result of a number of factors, including an ageing population, earlier detection of cancer and continued improvements in treatments.

Martin Ledwick, head of Cancer Research UK's information nurses, said: "It's really good news that more and more people are living with and surviving cancer. But it is essential that people surviving a diagnosis of the disease continue to receive long-term care and support that is tailored to their individual needs.

"The key is to provide good information for people affected by cancer so that they know what to expect from their treatment, understand how the disease may affect their future well-being, and where they can go for help and support.

"Cancer Research UK is working with health professionals to research suitable follow-up and support programmes for cancer survivors."

But Ciaran Devane, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support which commissioned the research, warned: "The number of cancer survivors is growing every year and failure by Primary Care Trusts to put in place proper resources to care for these people is a ticking time bomb.

"It is about time the NHS acknowledged that cancer is no longer necessarily a death sentence and recognised its long-term impact on people's lives."

Mr Devane welcomed the news that more people are living after a cancer diagnosis, but noted that care and support need to be continued after a person's initial medical treatment has ended.

"Survivors of cancer are often left with long-term physical and emotional problems, fractured relationships or financial difficulties," he pointed out.

Macmillan Cancer Support has called for a comprehensive package of care which provides long-term emotional, financial and practical support for cancer survivors long after their initial hospital care.

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Cancer cases up but survival more than doubles in breast and bowel cancer

Thursday 3 July 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

The number of people surviving some of the most common types of cancer for at least five years has doubled since the National Health Service was founded 60 years ago.

Comparisons have shown that survival for colon cancer has risen dramatically from 18 per cent to 47 per cent while breast cancer survival has more than doubled from 37 per cent to 77 per cent between 1946 and 1998.

Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) have compared cancer statistics in England and Wales from the inception of the NHS to the present day; survival and mortality statistics are based on recorded data; incidence statistics are estimated for England only.

In 1950 the Registrar General said that cancer killed nearly as many people in a single year as all the men who were killed during the six years of the Second World War. The disease would clearly become a growing burden for the NHS.

Professor David Forman, based at the University of Leeds and NCIN, who helped prepare the figures, said: "We can only estimate the cost of cancer to the NHS because we have been collecting good quality data on incidence, mortality and survival over a long period. Cancer is a substantially more common disease now than in 1948. And the NCIN will help us really understand the effects of improved treatment and earlier diagnosis on better survival."

Cervical cancer survival rates have increased substantially from 35 per cent to 61 per cent while rectal cancer has more than doubled from 22 per cent to 50 per cent.

In contrast, although survival for cancer of the stomach has improved (4 per cent to 13 per cent) and lung cancer survival has gone up (3 per cent to 6 per cent), they both remain sites of cancer with an extremely poor prognosis.

Because people are living longer now than in the post-war years and because the population is much larger, the overall number of cases of cancer has increased. The NHS screening programmes and improved diagnostic tests have also contributed to a higher incidence of cancer.

The statistics show a shocking increase in the rates of malignant melanoma - the potentially fatal form of skin cancer.

Even after allowing for the population increase, melanoma incidence rates in men have increased 13 fold since 1948, when less than 200 men were diagnosed each year compared with 2008 when more than 3,000 men will be diagnosed. In women the rates increased more than six fold.

Experts say such a rise in incidence can be partially attributed to the package holiday explosion that began in the 1960s allowing tens of thousands to holiday in the sun for the first time. Sunburn doubles the risk of skin cancer.

The estimated number of breast cancer cases has risen from around 10,000 in 1948 to more than 40,000 in 2008. Lifestyle factors have played their part in this - particularly having fewer children later in life. The NHS Cancer Screening Programme has also meant that many more breast cancers are detected earlier. But early detection and improved treatment account for the huge improvement in survival.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: "The improvement in cancer survival, over the years, is a testament to the world class research that has resulted in earlier diagnosis and better treatments for patients.

"But we must not be complacent; we want to see further improvements in survival in the future as we improve our ability to detect cancer early and as treatments become increasingly tailored to individual patients."

Prostate cancer cases were estimated to have risen dramatically from around 3,000 in 1948 to over 40,000 in 2008. Allowing for population growth and living longer this equates to a six-fold increase. The introduction of the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test in the early 1990s is largely responsible for the increase in the number of cases diagnosed.

Rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma increased six fold in 60 years with cases rising from just under 1,000 in 1948 to more than 10,000 in 2008. The increase is partly due to better diagnostic techniques.

Smoking patterns in the population lie behind the statistics for lung cancer in men and women. There were around 13,500 cases in men in 1948; this peaked in the mid-seventies at around 27,000 but has since dropped back to 16,500 in 2008 as more men have given up smoking.

As more and more women started smoking after the Second World War, so more and more cases of lung cancer were diagnosed. In 1948, around 2,000 women were diagnosed with the disease. But in 2008, that figure leapt to more than 12,000. This equates to an incidence rate of less than 10 cases in every 100,000 women in 1948 rising to over 30 cases in every 100,000 women now.

Although incidence rates have increased, better treatments have contributed to a general drop in mortality rates.

In particular, bowel cancer death rates have dropped by well over half despite the increase in incidence.

Deaths from stomach cancer have plummeted from 14,400 in 1948 to 5,000 in 2008. This is largely attributable to the drop in the H.pylori infection due to better living conditions and the advent of refrigeration keeping food fresh.

Male lung cancer mortality rates were 45 per 100,000 in 1948. They peaked in 1974 when they were around 110 per 100,000 and dropped substantially in 2005 when they were 50 per 100,000.

Professor Mike Richards, National Cancer Director, said: "Figures like these show the benefit of collecting data over a long period of time. The NCIN was set up with the aim of creating the best cancer information system in the world by 2012.

"The improvements in survival rates over the past 60 years for breast, colorectal and some other cancers are extremely encouraging, as is the fall in mortality rates. But the estimated increase in incidence of some cancers emphasises the need for further attention to be given to prevention and early diagnosis of cancer."

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Scientists predict three quarters of children with leukaemia will be cured

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Around three-quarters of children diagnosed with leukaemia today will be cured of their disease, according to research published in the British Journal of Cancer* today (Wednesday).

Scientists have developed a formal method for estimating the number of children diagnosed with leukaemia in the UK who are cured - meaning they have no greater risk of dying prematurely than children who never had leukaemia.

The cure rate has increased from 25 per cent in the early 1970s to 68 per cent in the early 1990s - and this figure is predicted to rise to 73 per cent for children diagnosed more recently.

The success of leukaemia treatment has previously been judged on five-year survival rates, which increased from 33 per cent to 79 per cent during 1971-2000. For some types of leukaemia, five-year survival is as high as 83 per cent.

The team examined how survival has changed over the years and they defined 'cure' as the point when the life expectancy of children diagnosed with leukaemia returned to normal for their age and sex.

First author Dr Anjali Shah, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose study was funded by charity CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA said: "It's great that children diagnosed with leukaemia can be told that the numbers cured of this terrible disease are increasing.

"We think the substantial increase in survival and 'cure' is largely due to improvements in treatment and care, which have come about thanks to international research collaboration and well-organised, multi-disciplinary trials - many of which have been led by researchers in Britain. Some survivors still experience adverse effects years after the end of treatment, which emphasises the need for long-term medical surveillance of these people."

The research is based on data from the National Registry of Childhood Tumours, which holds statistics on virtually all children under the age of 15 diagnosed with cancer in Great Britain.

Senior author Professor Michel Coleman, who leads the Cancer Research UK Cancer Survival Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "Our study suggests that the development of new treatments for leukaemia, combined with clinical trials to refine treatment strategies, has been effective in curing more children with leukaemia.

"But alongside the more intensive treatments for leukaemia that increase the chance of cure, we need to reduce the risk of longer-term adverse effects that children may suffer in later life, which can include recurrence of cancer in other parts of the body."

Edward Copisarow, chief executive of CHILDREN with LEUKEAMIA, said: "The research makes an important contribution to the way the success of childhood leukaemia treatment is evaluated. This is the first time that anyone has estimated childhood leukaemia cure trends over time. Estimating cure and determining for how long patients should be monitored is a valuable step beyond the arbitrary success measures of survival 5 or 10 years after diagnosis, because it provides a better sense of the long-term success we are having in fighting this disease."

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Although the majority of children with leukaemia can be cured, around a third don't respond well to current treatments and our efforts must focus on finding new treatments so that every child can survive a diagnosis of this disease.

"We will also need to continue long-term monitoring of childhood leukaemia survivors to document any effects the treatment may have in later life. This will help doctors to improve treatments for future patients."

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Prostate cancer deaths double in men with BRCA2

Tuesday 24 June 2008

Cancer Research UK Press Release

Men with prostate cancer caused by a faulty BRCA2 gene are more than twice as likely to die from the disease than those carrying the faulty BRCA1 gene - reveals a study published in the British Journal of Cancer* today (Tuesday).

These findings could help tailor treatment and target chemotherapy more effectively to men with prostate cancer that is caused by a BRCA gene fault.

Carriers of the BRCA2 gene were found to live for an average of four years following a diagnosis of the disease, compared to an average of eight years in men carrying the BRCA1 gene.

Lead researcher, Dr Steven Narod, based at the University of Toronto in Canada, said: "We know that carrying a faulty BRCA2 gene increases a man’s risk of getting prostate cancer, and our study shows that it also affects how long he will survive a diagnosis of the disease.

"This information is important because it shows that men with BRCA2 are not responding as well to current therapies, so we hope these findings could help doctors more effectively tailor treatment to this group."

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. Around 35,000 new cases of the disease are diagnosed in the UK and around 10,000 men die from the disease each year. Around one in every 500 men carry the BRCA2 gene.

The lifetime risk for developing prostate cancer is one in 14 for men in the UK. Previous studies have shown that men with a faulty BRCA2 gene can be up to five times more likely to develop prostate cancer than the general population.

Dr Narod continued: "The results of our study are very exciting - if this link is confirmed in further clinical trials, it could help doctors develop new treatment methods for prostate cancer patients with a faulty BRCA2 gene."

A greater understanding of who is most at risk and most likely to die from prostate cancer could also lead to targeted screening for men with a family history.

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Although only a very small percentage of men with prostate cancer will carry a faulty BRCA2 gene, they're much more likely to die from the disease. It's important that more research is done in this area to ensure that this group is targeted effectively so cancer is picked up at an early stage and, more importantly, that they are given the most appropriate treatment.

"Men with a strong family history of prostate or breast cancer can visit their GP for advice."

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