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Glasgow cancer experts lead new study to improve care around world

University of Glasgow <i>(Image: Newsquest)</i>
University of Glasgow (Image: Newsquest)

GLASGOW experts are to lead a new international effort to help improve cancer care around the world.

Spearheading the new Lancet Oncology Commission, University of Glasgow researchers will lead a two-year project to create a blueprint for overcoming barriers to personalised cancer care.

A rapidly increasing proportion of contemporary cancer care relies on a precision oncology strategy – the process of using molecular testing to understand a patient’s tumour and how to successfully target the cancer cells within it.

However, the majority of patients around the world, particularly those living in lower- and middle-income countries, cannot access molecular testing due to a range of issues.

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Professor Andrew Biankin, Regius Chair of Surgery at the University of Glasgow, said: “We have made great progress in defining the genomic aberrations that cause and drive cancer, are developing more and more treatments that directly target these cancer-causing molecular abnormalities. Yet these great advances are only reaching a small proportion of people even in developed countries.

“The time has come to incorporate broad genomic testing in routine cancer care. This will improve outcomes by using current treatments better through predicting who they will work for and for whom they won’t before giving a treatment.”

Dr Raffaella Casolino, a pancreatic cancer expert from the University of Glasgow’s School of Cancer Sciences and chair of the Commission, said: “This Commission has the ambitious goal of improving the lives of people affected by cancer and their families driving the evolution of precision oncology over the next decades. Cancer burden is doubling by 2040 and health disparities are major drivers of inequalities in outcomes both within and between countries. It is only through a global approach that we can reduce the burden of cancer.”