Aspirin trial to examine if it can stop cancer returning

The world's largest clinical trial to examine whether aspirin can prevent cancers returning has begun in the UK.

About 11,000 people who have had early bowel, breast, prostate, stomach and oesophageal cancer will be involved.

Uncertainty about the drug's possible anti-cancer qualities has led to fierce medical debate in recent years.

If it is proven to work, scientists say it would be "game-changing", by providing a cheap and effective way to help more patients survive.

During the study, funded by the charity Cancer Research UK and the NIHR - the research arm of the NHS - patients will take a tablet every day for five years.

Researchers will compare groups of patients taking different doses of aspirin with people taking dummy (placebo) pills and check for any recurrences of cancer.

Dr Fiona Reddington from Cancer Research UK said: "The trial is especially exciting as cancers that recur are often harder to treat so finding a cheap and effective way to prevent this is potentially game-changing for patients."

The trial will run across 100 UK centres, involving patients who are having or have had treatment for early cancer, and will last up to 12 years.

But scientists warn that aspirin is not suitable for everyone and should not be used without medical advice.

Taking the drug every day comes with a serious health warning as it can cause side effects such as ulcers and bleeding from the stomach, or even the brain.

View more here on BBC/Health

‘Off switch’ identified to cut spread of bowel cancer

Dr Aideen Ryan from NUI Galway found that switching off a specific protein in bowel cancer cells can stimulate an anti-tumour immune response.

The research that opens new avenues for the development of novel treatment approaches was funded by the Irish Cancer Society.

Bowel cancer is a significant health concern in Ireland with 2,400 new cases diagnosed and almost 1,000 deaths from the disease every year.

Up to now, therapeutic developments to stop its spread to other parts of the body have had very little success.

Dr Ryan found the activity of a key protein known as NF-kappaB, with the help of a type of immune cell, called tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs), promotes the spread of cancer cells from the bowel to the abdominal cavity.

TAMs are present within or close to tumour tissue and can act in tumour-promoting or a tumour-killing manner, depending on their surrounding environment.

Dr Ryan and colleagues in NUI Galway found TAMs can be switched from being tumour-promoting to being tumour-killing by turning off the NF-kappaB protein in bowel cancer cells, thereby causing a significant reduction in bowel cancer spread to the abdominal cavity.

Dr Ryan said the findings had, for the first time, uncovered the effect of targeting the NF-kappaB protein in bowel cancer cells.

“We are continuing this important research in order to develop a new treatment approach for bowel cancer which could potentially result in better treatments for patients with this disease,” she said.

Read more on Irish Examiner here

Irish scientists developing bowel cancer blood tests

A simple and cheap blood test for bowel cancer, which has been developed by Irish-based scientists, could be available for widespread use as early as next year.

The test, which will search for biomarkers generated when bowel cancer starts to develop, promises to be more accurate and sensitive than existing tests.

It is being developed by scientists at the DCU-based Biomedical Diagnostics Institute in partnership with biomedical company Randox Technologies.

It is expected the new test could cost as little as €25.

Because it uses a small amount of blood it is less invasive than existing bowel cancer tests, and it is therefore leading to hopes that it may encourage more people to volunteer to be screened for the disease.

The current national bowel screening programme for those aged 60-69 has had a low uptake.

This is thought to be in part because it involves testing stool samples. Such testing is also considered slow and not entirely reliable.

Survival rates from bowel cancer are higher when the disease is caught early, after a formal diagnosis involving colonoscopy.

It is hoped the new test could lead to earlier diagnosis and a reduced need to send patients for further investigation via colonoscopy.

Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer in Ireland.

2,500 people are diagnosed with it each year and 1,000 die from it.

The collaboration is funded by Enterprise Ireland and Randox. 

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UL researchers in bowel cancer breakthrough

Researchers at University of Limerick and University Hospital Limerick have identified several new genetic biomarkers which better predict outcomes for patients with bowel/colorectal cancer.

The research team identified genes that are predictors of cancer recurrence and can also help to identify a patients’ suitability to specific types of chemotherapy.

Professor J. Calvin Coffey Graduate Entry Medical School, UL and Colorectal Surgeon, University Hospital Limerick explains: “One of the key early events in the spread of cancer is its spread to involve the lymph glands that drain the colon. The identification of tumours that will spread to the glands is a key challenge for clinicians as these are the patients most likely to benefit from chemotherapy.”

“The ability to avoid harmful chemotherapeutic side-effects is a clinical need that has yet to be met by the diagnostic tools available to clinicians. In Ireland colorectal cancer is the 3rd most common cancer with 2435 new cases diagnosed each year. This diagnostic instrument that we have developed, and this research in general, will impact on patients globally as we can now pin-point precisely patients who will develop spread to glands, and thus benefit from chemotherapy.”

The research findings were published in the Annals of Surgery (the premier surgical journal worldwide)–http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24169164 “Introducing a novel and robust technique for determining lymph node status in colorectal cancer.”

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BowelScreen - The National Bowel Screening Programme is now available to men and women aged 60-69

Bowel cancer is the second most common cancer among men and women in Ireland

The National Bowel Screening Programme has said that all those on the register will be invited for their first screening by the end of 2015.

More than 130,000 men and women aged 60 to 69 have already been invited to date.

The free screening involves a fast home test every two years and people can check if they are on the register by contacting 1800-454555.

Screening will be extended to those aged 55 to 74 at a later stage.

Bowel cancer is the second most common cancer among men and women in Ireland, with almost 2,400 new cases identified each week.

More information is available at www.bowelscreen.ie

Research may lead to a new bowel cancer detection method

HRB-funded research at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and just published in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, could lead to a new biomarker for bowel cancer

Long, pointy Gram-negative rods typical of Fusobacterium nucleatum. Image from www.infectionnet.org

The research, led by Dr David Hughes at the Department of Physiology and Medical Physics, RCSI found a significantly increased presence of a common microbe, Fusobacterium nucleatum (Fn), in tissue and stool samples of patients with colorectal cancers and colorectal benign tumours.

Commenting on the findings, Dr Hughes said,

'Our research found that cancer patients with low bacterial levels had significantly longer survival times than patients with moderate and high levels of the bacterium. Also, for patients with a benign tumour, we found that the presence of the bacteria may be a risk factor for disease progression from tumour to cancer. This is a significant finding because it highlights the potential of Fn detection as a possible indicator of colorectal cancers'.

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Efforts to combat Fn infection could be considered for colorectal cancers patients with high levels of the bacterium to improve the survival prospects for these patients.
More details are available from the RCSI 

Irish Cancer Society donates €1m to bowel-screening programme

The Irish Cancer Society has donated €1m to the National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme, BowelScreen.

The money will be used to buy equipment in hospitals around the country to support the continued rollout of the screening programme.

Free bowel-cancer screening has been offered to people aged 60-69 since last year.

At a future date, the aim is to extend screening to those aged 55-74 years.

View article here