News

Charities encourage ethnic minority communities to talk about Cancer

Press Release

A number of big charity names, including the British Lung Foundation, MacMillan Cancer Support and Breast Cancer Care have been brought together by the charity Cancer Equality to deliver the upcoming ‘Ethnic Minority Cancer Awareness Week’, from 3rd to 10th July. The week aims to increase public awareness on the importance of taking action to reduce risk of cancer, particularly within black and minority ethnic (BME) communities, through organized events throughout the country. Other charities involved in this are Bowel Cancer UK, The Prostate Cancer Charity and The Afiya Trust.

New drug may help women with hereditary breast cancer

A small clinical trial of a new drug designed to treat hereditary breast cancer has achieved promising results, UK scientists have said.

The scientists recruited 54 women from the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, all of whom had previously received chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer, and who carried faulty copies of the BRCA1 or 2 genes.

Cancer drug erases fingerprints

A commonly-used cancer drug can make patients' fingerprints disappear, potentially causing problems for foreign travel, a doctor warns.

One patient was held by US immigration officials for four hours before they allowed him to enter the country. The patient's doctor, Eng-Huat Tan, from Singapore, advised all travellers to the US being treated with the drug capecitabine to carry a doctor's note.

For more information please visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8064332.stm

New study marks major advance in bowel cancer screening

What if having your bowel investigated with a tiny camera just once could greatly reduce the risk of dying from bowel cancer and of developing the disease in the first place? Striking new results from an important study show that this is very real possibility.

Thousands of people could be saved from developing bowel cancer because of this test and thousands more could be diagnosed early when treatment is most effective.

As Harpal Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Cancer Research UK said, "This is one of the most important developments in cancer research for years."

For the past 16 years, Professor Wendy Atkin from Imperial College London has been coordinating a trial of a test called flexible sigmoidoscopy or, more commonly, "Flexi-Scope". It involves a tube called an endoscope, which has a tiny camera and light at the end of it.

For full report please visit http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/