Scientist’s work may be cancer breakthrough
Published: January 10, 2005
New research could mean earlier diagnosis.
Dr Hari Chirakkal, based at Sheffield University, hopes the kits will spot bowel cancer in patients who are not showing any symptoms.
This could lead to the UK’s first large-scale screening of people in high-risk groups.
He plans to set up a company to market the kits and distribute them globally. Bowel cancer claims up to 20,000 lives in the UK each year.
Dr Chirakkal, who is one of Yorkshire Forward’s first Bioscience Yorkshire Enterprise Fellows, has been working on projects to combat bowel cancer, with Dr Bernard Corfe at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital for two years. He has received £30,000 from Yorkshire Forward to test his ideas.
Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, affects the lower part of the digestive system, the large bowel and the rectum. It is one of the hardest cancers to detect in its early stages.
Dr Chirakkal said: “Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK, with more than 35,000 cases diagnosed and about 15,000 to 20,000 deaths from the disease each year. The exact causes are not known. However, studies show that certain factors increase a person’s chance of developing it. Screening should begin at the age of 40 in healthy adults, as the risk increases rapidly after this age. Widespread screening for colorectal cancer could save many lives each year.
“Early detection reduces the probability of major surgery and increases chances of a cure. This means it’s important that the cancer is diagnosed at an early stage. Current practice involves an invasive endoscopic examination of patients who have attended a clinic with potential symptoms of disease. This is an expensive, time-consuming procedure and cannot be used as a general screening method.”
Dr Chirakkal has grown colon cells in a laboratory, and identified genes which may show whether a patient has colon disease. Testing stool samples for genetic changes could provide a speedy way of finding out if somebody has cancer, he argues.
“This is based on a hypothesis. I hope that hypothesis is right,” he said. “We hope to spin out a small biotech company from the research. The other option is licensing it out to some of the big players in the diagnostic market.”
Dr Chirakkal is one of the leaders of a bioscience programme which aims to turn Yorkshire into a global centre of the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Suzanne Emmett, the science and enterprise development manager with the Bioscience Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship (BYEF), said the scheme aimed to turn more scientists into entrepreneurs.
She said: “BYEF is delighted to be supporting this vital area of research and looks forward to working with Hari to fully exploit the potential applications.
“We are actively encouraging the development of links between our researchers and the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: