John Primrose

Professor John Primrose is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and is based at the University of Southampton. He heads up a clinical trial investigating how to improve treatment for people with cancer of the bile duct, and he is also researching treatments for bowel cancer.

The BILCAP clinical trial will involve around 360 people with bile duct cancer. All the participants will be treated with surgery. After this half will be given a 24 week course of treatment with a chemotherapy drug called capecitabine. The other half will be closely monitored but will not be treated with the drug.

Professor Primrose and his team will find out which of the two treatments gives the longest survival and also note any side effects of capecitabine. The team will also investigate how each treatment affects quality of life.

The trial will be coordinated from the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit in Birmingham. If combining surgery with chemotherapy improves survival and does not have unacceptable side effects, it could be adopted as the standard treatment for bile duct cancer in the future.

Investigating bowel cancer treatments

Professor Primrose is also leading on another study which involves collecting liver tissue and blood samples from people with bowel cancer which has spread to the liver. These samples are from participants in the EPOC trial.

The samples will be processed and stored so that researchers can investigate how people respond to different combinations of treatment. The trial will also help researchers find out more about the side effects of the drugs involved.