Search for new cancer treatments in Southampton gets £5.5million boost

THE SEARCH for new cancer treatments in Southampton has been given a multi-million-pound boost.

Cancer Research UK is to invest £5.5million over the next five years at the Southampton Clinical Trials Unit to run world-leading trials which test new cancer treatments and help find ways to diagnose the disease at an earlier stage.

Based at Southampton General Hospital, the Clinical Trials Unit work with doctors, scientists and patient representatives across the UK, evaluating trials of new treatments, medical interventions and diagnostic tools to create the evidence that they should be standard of care for future patients in the NHS.

Director of Southampton Clinical Trials Unit, Gareth Griffiths told the Daily Echo: “If there’s an idea or some evidence that a new cancer treatment might work, we develop those clinical trials to work out what the dose should be and make sure the dose is safe and there’s evidence that in works in cancer patients.

“If that works, we then compare the new treatment against the usual standard of care in the NHS. If we can prove that new treatment works, our hope is that the NHS will start using that as their new standard of care for all future cancer patients that come in with that type of cancer.

“Funding is crucial to allowing us to expand our ground-breaking work into more cancer types, facilitating new treatment trials and ways to diagnosis cancer earlier for patients in and across the UK.”

Over the last five years of Cancer Research UK funding, Southampton’s Clinical Trials Unit has overseen trials that have led to life-changing results.

Eighty-four-year-old, Ivan Symonds, originally from Southampton who now lives in Southsea, took part in the hospital’s ProCAID trial that showed adding a targeted cancer drug to chemotherapy treatment can improve survival for patients with advanced prostate cancer, sending his cancer into remission.

He told the Echo: “I signed up to the trial which might have been a risk but ultimately it was a risk worth taking!

“It worked for me and hopefully it can work for others in the future.”

Ivan added: “I have to say, the staff here have been fantastic. From the nurses to the registrars and doctors. Without them, none of this would be possible.”