About Yorkshire Cancer Research
Research in Bradford is focused on pharmaceutical approaches to cancer therapy, mainly targeting oestrogen receptors in breast cancer and DNA-targeted drugs. Last year saw a doubling of the first-class research facilities available to the Yorkshire Cancer Research (YCR) Laboratory of Drug Design team with a second floor added to the previous new building and a consolidation within the Cancer Research Centre at the University of Bradford.
YCR’s £7.2m investment in the Centre for Magnetic Resonance Investigations at Hull Royal Infirmary includes the recent purchase of one of the UK’s leading MRI scanners. This new scanner will enhance the management of cancer patients in the area and will significantly benefit YCR research projects.
The breast cancer research programme focuses on differentiation of benign from malignant lesions. Patients with lobular carcinoma underwent significantly more operations to achieve tumour clearance than those undergoing additional MRI. The role of MRI in the management of women scheduled for wide local excision for primary breast cancer is currently under investigation in a multi-centre study co-ordinated from Hull.
A wide range of cancer research projects is being pursued in Leeds, from the molecular biology of colorectal, cervical and haematological cancers to more fundamental studies on the development of modified viruses that are designed to target and kill tumours. For more than 15 years, YCR has provided major support for the development of photodynamic therapy (PDT) in the Leeds Centre for Photobiology and Photodynamic Therapy. Diseases treated have ranged from advanced lung and oesophageal cancer through pituitary tumours to non-melanoma skin cancer
In Sheffield, the Yorkshire Cancer Research endowments continue to provide a firm base for research within the Institute for Cancer Studies and Academic Unit of Clinical Oncology. In addition, much other cancer research conducted in Sheffield is also supported by YCR, including work on malignant stem cells, invasion of melanoma tumours and the development of viruses designed to kill prostate tumours.
In the prostate cancer group in York, the major achievement has been to perfect cell culture models of prostate and prostate cancer invasion, which will allow the study in molecular detail of the influences of hormones, matrix and stromal cells on the development of prostate cancers. This provides an ideal resource for testing, pre-clinical testing, therapies without recourse to animal models.
The York p53 group studies a protein (termed p53) that normally protects against the development of cancer and is able to prevent the growth of damaged cells, which may become cancerous. The group has discovered a new important function of p53 in the protection against cancer, namely that p53 plays an important role in the repair of DNA damage. This suggests a new approach to the therapy of p53-deficient tumours, which account for over 50% of human cancers.
Our history
In 1923, a small group of politicians and distinguished clinicians met in London and decided to form what came to be known as the British Empire Cancer Campaign for Research to raise funds to support cancer research. Despite a widespread appeal the group raised only £68,000 in the first year.
In 1925, it was decided to set up a network of committees throughout the country in an attempt to raise more funds. When the business professionals and prominent citizens of Yorkshire read the appeal, they decided that Yorkshire was big enough to raise enough money to support a centre of its own at Leeds and that is how the Yorkshire Council of the British Empire Cancer Campaign for Research (now Yorkshire Cancer Research) came into existence. Within 18 months of the first meeting £150,000 had been raised.
The charity was established to promote research in the former County of York, into the cause and cure of cancer and to propagate the results of that research.
YCR is a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities and follows the Medical Research Council’s protocol. It is also a founder member of the newly-formed National Cancer Research Institute.
Its Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) is made up of eighteen members, a third of whom are external to Yorkshire. All applications for funding are also adjudicated by external referees of the highest international standard relevant to the particular research topic.