Our work
The research fund has supported numerous national and international cancer trials, run at St Luke's Cancer Centre, since 1996. These trials have helped to advance treatments, leading to improved survival and quality of life for many of our patients. We plan to continue research aimed at improving cancer treatments and patient care, including enhanced radiotherapy and chemotherapy delivery.
Currently, BRIGHT is sponsoring an Oncology Research Fellow, Dr Rachel Gabitass, who is working towards an MD in conjunction with Dr Middleton. She is researching potential new targets for cancer treatments in Upper Gastrointestinal cancers (Oesophageal, Gastric and Pancreatic). There are two main cell types that she is investigating; Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells and T regulatory cells. Both of these cell types have recently been shown to be increased in certain cancers and are thought to suppress the normal immune system so that it does not kill the cancer cells as it should. By testing patients' blood and tumour samples she is researching whether these cells are raised in these three cancer types compared to patients without cancer. She is also looking at the effect of cancer treatments on these cell numbers (chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a cancer vaccine used in the TeloVac trial). Research is already in progress developing a vaccine to target T regulatory cells, so it is important to establish which tumour types are associated with an increase in these cell numbers, and also to understand the effects of our existing cancer treatments.
BRIGHT is also sponsoring a research project in conjunction with Dr.Helmout Modjtahedi, at Kingston University School of Life Sciences. This is an investigation into biological markers that are important in the progression of colorectal cancer. In recent years, many tumour types and cancer cell lines have been shown to contain a small population of cells within a tumour that are capable of self-renewal. These cells are known as cancer stem cells .These are thought to play a critical role not only in the initiation and progression of tumours but also in the development of resistance to conventional therapy. Cancer stem cells can be isolated from several human tumours including colorectal cancers and so our aim is to develop more specific therapeutic strategies and predictive factors for patient treatment.
Future research projects are planned, in particular by Dr Alexandra Stewart who wishes to look into the improvement of radiotherapy dose delivery in pelvic cancer. She is particularly interested in the role of brachytherapy in rectal cancer. Brachytherapy is the placement of radioactive sources within or very close to a cancer, giving a highly conformal radiotherapy treatment,
