Cancer treatment – no longer a one size fits all
Modern medicine is helping clinicians tailor cancer treatments for individuals and Birmingham researchers are at the forefront.
Modern medicine is helping clinicians tailor cancer treatments for individuals and Birmingham researchers are at the forefront.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham are working hard to understand the intricacies of how different types of cancer affect different individuals, and how a more nuanced approach to cancer treatment and care can be more effective for patients.
This year, World Cancer Day is highlighting how every experience with cancer is unique. Work here in Birmingham certainly supports this, with a full spectrum of research: from fundamental science to understanding the genetic influences driving cancer to develop in different ways in different people, through to clinical trials looking at the effectiveness of existing treatments in different patient groups, and experimental treatments uniquely modifying patients’ own immune systems to fight the disease.
Whilst surgery has been used to treat cancer since ancient times, and early radiation therapy for cancer just predates the granting of the University’s Royal Charter, (with x-rays first being used to treat cancer in 1886), throughout the last 125 years, the University has seen enormous advances in the understanding of cancer biology and therapeutics.
At the turn of the 20th-century, far less was known about the causes of cancer, fewer types of cancer were recognised and, even as the 21st-century began, a cancer diagnosis was less likely to come with a promising prognosis than it might be today. Treatments were evolving but for much of this period, a one-size-fits-all approach for each type of cancer was really the only approach available. Today’s research is changing this, making personalised or precision medicine possible and saving more lives than ever before.
A few months ago, the University reported on research that could revolutionise the way that brain tumours are identified in children. Emeritus Professor Andrew Preet led a team of researchers from the University of Birmingham, Newcastle University and Birmingham Children’s Hospital, in a game-changing study that could help differentiate different types of medulloblastoma in children, in as little as ten minutes.
Jack Bourne and his family rang the cancer treatment bell at Birmingham Children's Hospital.
The research has the potential to pave the way for using MRI scanning combined with machine learning to assess ‘signature’ metabolic profiles without the need for invasive biopsy. Importantly, this could rapidly reduce the current three-to-four-week wait from presentation to full diagnosis, meaning that children affected could be offered the best possible treatment for their specific type of tumour sooner.
Another groundbreaking advance in personalised medicine is the opening of the first pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine trial in Europe, here in Birmingham. Personalised mRNA cancer vaccines are a form of immunotherapy treatment, which have shown promise and are currently being tested across a number of clinical trials.
Professor Shivan Sivakumar, Associate Professor in Oncology at the University of Birmingham and Consultant Medical Oncologist for University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, is leading the trial of an investigational therapeutic cancer vaccine in patients with pancreatic cancer. It aims to train the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells, to potentially prevent cancer recurrence and increase the prospect of a patient being cured.
Birmingham is the ideal place to open this trial, with one of the leading pancreatic cancer units in the UK and serving a super diverse population. Following surgery, samples of the patients' tumour tissue and blood are sent to laboratories, to design and manufacture the investigational cancer vaccine. For the patients eligible for the trial, a mRNA-based cancer treatment is manufactured with mRNA specific to the proteins in that individual’s tumour.
University of Birmingham specialists will continue to search for treatments that are more effective and kinder to the body, and the appreciation that a person-centred approach to cancer care that fully integrates each individual’s unique needs is key to achieving the best health outcomes.
Professor of Clinical Paediatric Oncology (NIHR)
Staff profile for Andrew Peet, Professor of Clinical Paediatric Oncology (NIHR), Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham.
Associate Professor in Oncology
Staff profile for Dr Shivan Sivakumar, Associate Professor in Oncology based in the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy, University of Birmingham.