By Lauren Pecorino
There is a tendency to complain about policies when writing blogs, but I think it is time to commend the British campaigns and innovations in treatment. They have proven to be some of the best in the world and have had a major impact in the fight against cancer.
One of the best British campaigns is against cervical cancer. Getting personally posted invitations to attend your next PAP screening, supported by pamphlets of information, is something few women ignore. Those who try to ignore these invitations are rightly and relentlessly bombarded with regular reminders.
And, with the knowledge that a sexually transmitted virus, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), is responsible for all cases of cervical cancer, the UK implemented a national school-based HPV vaccination programme that has proven to yield high uptake. By 2009, 70 percent of 12-13 year olds in the UK were fully vaccinated. These results are admirable compared to the results of alternative on-demand provisions offered by other countries including the USA. Note that the vaccine is recommended for early teens as it is a preventative vaccine and not a therapeutic vaccine, and must be administered before the initiation of sexual activity for it to be effective. The vaccine prevents about 70% of cervical cancers caused by two specific strains of HPV. PAP screening is still important to catch cases that are not prevented by the vaccine. An added bonus of this campaign is that the same vaccine also protects against some head, neck, and anal cancers caused by HPV infections.
Another great British effort is towards the prevention of lung cancer. The anti-smoking adverts have been haunting, especially the most recent one released by the UK Department of Health that shows a tumor growing on a cigarette. It is brilliant. I wish I had designed it. The advert strikingly conveys the message that if you saw the damage smoking causes, you would not smoke. The percentage of male cigarette smokers have fallen from 55% in 1970 to 21% in 2010 and a decreasing number of deaths due to lung cancer has followed this trend.
Click here to view the embedded video.
The UK is also a model of good practice in that it is the only country in the world which has a network of free ‘stop-smoking’ services, recently supported by specialized training for National Health Service Stop Smoking practitioners.
We can help the national campaign at a personal level by being more opinionated and outspoken when it comes to letting those around us know that smoking is harmful and “uncool”- especially among the young. We must ensure the message is passed down to new generations.
Finally, the UK is at the leading edge in using stem cells to help replace organs damaged by cancer. Tracheal transplants using tracheal scaffolds from cadavers seeded with the patient’s own stem cells have been used to replace damaged tissue for patients with tracheal cancer. Currently scientists at University College London are developing very similar procedures to grow a new nose for a patient who had lost their nose to cancer. These innovative approaches are the result of a continuously open, well-supported but regulated stem cell research policy, not yet seen in the USA.
Well done Great Britain!
Lauren Pecorino received her PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in Cell and Developmental Biology. She crossed the Atlantic to carry out a postdoctoral tenure at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London. She is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich where teaches Cancer Biology and Therapeutics. The teaching of this course motivated her to write The Molecular Biology of Cancer: Mechanisms, Targets, and Therapeutics, now in its second edition. Feedback on the textbook posted on Amazon from a cancer patient drove her to write a book on cancer for a wider audience: Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science.
Read a World Cancer Day Q&A with Lauren Pecorino.
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The post World Cancer Day 2013: The Best of British appeared first on OUPblog.
On World Cancer Day 2012, we speak with Dr Lauren Pecorino, author of Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science, to learn the latest in the field of cancer research. – Nicola
There are so many myths about cancer that it is sometimes difficult to understand exactly what it is. Can you briefly explain how cancer develops?
Cancer is a disease of the human genome. Many agents that cause cancer cause permanent changes to your genes. These permanent changes are called mutations. Cancer is usually caused by the accumulation of mutations over time. This is why cancer risk increases with age. The altered genes may produce faulty proteins that lead to abnormal cell growth and this appears as a tumour. Cancer is characterized by abnormal cell growth and the ability of tumour cells to spread throughout the body. It is this second characteristic, called metastasis that is the most difficult aspect to treat.
It is said that cancer now affects one in three people over a lifetime. What’s the latest progress in the field of cancer research?
There has been tremendous progress in the field of cancer management. The good news is that trends in death rates are decreasing for many cancers though that is not to say for all cancers. There are millions of cancer survivors who have had their diagnosis ten or more years ago. Many people are now living with cancer. Conventional treatments such as surgical procedures have been refined and new drugs that target tumour-specific molecules have proved efficient and promises less side effects.
In addition, we are learning to make lifestyle choices that science has shown reduces cancer risk — the most obvious being not smoking. We also have cancer screening programmes that can catch cancer early and even prevent cancer by treating pre-cancerous growths. The latest means for preventing a specific type of cancer is a cancer vaccine. Interestingly the vaccine designed to prevent cervical cancer vaccine also prevents several other cancers caused by the human papilloma virus such as some head and neck cancers.
What do you see as the priorities for future cancer research? Where will the next great advances be?
I see four main priorites for future cancer research.
1 – To develop better and less invasive diagnostics so that we can detect cancer earlier. It is well-known that catching cancer earlier gives a better outcome or prognosis.
2 – To expand our understanding of the individual molecular differences between tumors and to be able to fully practice personalized medicine which allows a better match between a patient and a drug. This understanding will need to be supported by technology that allows a patient’s tumour DNA to be sequenced (similar to the methods used for the Human Genome Project).
3 – To understand if we can turn a cancer cell back into a normal cell. This may sound strange but lessons from stem cells and cloning tell us that changing one cell type into another is possible.
4 – To better understand metastasis and how we can better treat it. The spreading of cancer cells throughout the body is the most difficult aspect of treating
