Leeds announced as part of new global team of experts transforming bowel cancer care
Cancer Research UK and partners have committed £5m in funding to form a world-leading research team tasked with making personalised medicine a reality for people with bowel cancer.
Professor Jenny Seligmann, Consultant Medical Oncologist and Professor of Gastrointestinal Oncology at the University of Leeds will co-lead the team.
The CRC-STARS initiative will bring together 40 research experts from across the UK, including those from the University of Leeds, Spain, Italy and Belgium to find kinder, better treatments for the disease, which kills 16,800 people in the UK every year. Joining forces will enable them to use their combined expertise across multiple research areas, and pair clinical trial data with cutting-edge technology.
Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in the UK. Despite this, treatment options remain limited, particularly for patients who are diagnosed at later stages of the disease.
CRC-STARS is jointly funded by Cancer Research UK (£1.7m), the Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK (£1.7m), philanthropic support from Bjorn Saven CBE and Inger Saven (£1m), and the Scientific Foundation of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (FC-AECC, €600,000 [~£500,000]).
Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, Michelle Mitchell, said:
“For over 100 years, Cancer Research UK-funded scientists have been working to beat bowel cancer, and this project is one of the most comprehensive for bowel cancer that we have ever supported.\
“Together with our funding partners – the Bowelbabe Fund, Bjorn and Inger Saven and the FC-AECC – we can empower the CRC-STARS team to speed up the development of personalised treatment for people living with bowel cancer, bringing us closer to a world where people live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.”
Professor Jenny Seligmann said, “We are delighted to be working with our colleagues across the UK and beyond in this new research partnership. Connecting early-stage discovery scientists working in laboratories with clinical researchers working in hospitals and other clinical settings will allow us to look at bowel cancer in a more sophisticated way than ever before. This will hopefully lead to better, more tailored treatments for this type of cancer and better patient outcomes.”
