Almost half of cancers are caused by an unhealthy lifestyle that could be avoided by quitting smoking, losing weight, exercising and drinking less alcohol, the most comprehensive study of its kind has found.Around 134,000 cancers each year are the result of a poor lifestyle, Cancer Research UK has found.

In the most wide reaching study yet conducted into the issue, it was found that 14 different lifestyle factors ranging from smoking, to lack of exercise, eating too much salt, not having babies, drinking too much and being overweight contributed to four in every ten cancers diagnosed in the UK.

The findings expose the myth that developing cancer is ‘bad luck’ or down to your genes, the researchers said.

Previous studies had suggested around 80,000 cancers a year could be prevented but they did not take into account occupational exposures to things like asbestos, infections that can cause cancer and sunburn as the latest research has.

In a complex set of research studies, scientists calculated how many cancers and of what type could be attributed to each of the 14 lifestyle factors.

The findings of the research The Fraction of Cancer Attributable to Lifestyle and Environmental Factors in the UK were published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Smoking was the biggest factor, causing nearly one in five of all cancers.

But Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said most people would not know that a quarter of all breast cancer cases could be prevented along with half of colorectal cancers.

He added: “Leading a healthy lifestyle doesn’t guarantee that someone will not get cancer but doing so will significantly stack the odds in your favour.”

Dr Kumar said tackling unhealthy lifestyle factors linked to cancer would also reduce the risk of a host of other killer diseases such as heart disease, respiratory problems, kidney disease and others.

The study found that alcohol was responsible for 6.4 per cent of breast cancers and almost one in ten liver cancers.

Three quarters of stomach cancers could be avoided, mostly by not smoking, eating too much salt and consuming more fruit and vegetables.

Red meat consumption led to 2.7 per cent of cancers, almost 8,500 cases. Obesity was linked to more than five per cent of cancers or almost 18000 cases, including a third of womb cancers.

Lack of breastfeeding was linked to 3.1 per cent of breast cancers and 17 per cent of ovarian cancers.

The study did not examine how many cancer deaths would be prevented with a healthier lifestyle.

Sara Hiom, director of information at Cancer Research UK, said: “We know, especially during the Christmas party season, that it is hard to watch what you eat and limit alcohol and we don’t want people to feel guilty about having a drink or indulging a bit more than usual. But it’s very important for people to understand that long term changes to their lifestyles can really reduce their cancer risk.”

The World Cancer Research Fund did a similar exercise in 2007 coming up with recommendations to individuals on how to reduce their cancer risk by eating less red meat, taking more exercise and staying slim.

Dr Rachel Thompson, Deputy Head of Science for World Cancer Research Fund, said: “This adds to the now overwhelmingly strong evidence that our cancer risk is affected by our lifestyles.

“We hope this new study helps to raise awareness of the fact that cancer is not simply a question of fate and that people can make changes today that can reduce their risk of developing cancer in the future.”

Two thirds of parents who have children fighting cancer are being forced into debt due to the costs of caring for them, according to research.The charity CLIC Sargent found in it’s survey Childhood cancer drives two thirds of parents into debt families were struggling to meet the extra expenses of childcare, travel and accommodation.

Many such parents also take extensive unpaid leave, so the families have to get by on reduced incomes.

The survey of 245 parents found 66 per cent were having to borrow money to make ends meet, while 76 per cent said extra costs were having a major impact on family finances.

More than two in five (42 per cent) were borrowing on a credit card, while 20 per cent had taken out a loan.

More than one in 20 (6 per cent) had turned to high interest, short-term loans to cope with additional costs.

Of those in debt, 41 per cent had been forced to borrow more than £1,000 to fund extra costs while 27 per cent borrowed more than £2,000.

More than half (55 per cent) had taken unpaid leave – many more than three months – while 13 per cent said they felt they had been demoted as a result.

Cancer-related expenses every month amounted to more than £360 on average.

Lorraine Clifton, chief executive of CLIC Sargent, said: “Everyone is suffering in this economic climate but parents of children with cancer are amongst the hardest hit. The extra costs can be significant.

“It’s shocking to hear that some families felt driven to debt in order to get through financially. Unpaid leave from work, travel costs and care for siblings are some of the additional costs that families face once cancer treatment begins.

“CLIC Sargent is concerned that Government reforms will restrict families’ options to financial support through the benefits system.

“Which is why we want to work with the Government and other organisations to ensure young people and children with cancer, and their families, have the financial support they need.”

Cancer care on the NHS lags behind that in many other developed countries because Labour wasted billions of pounds on PFI schemes, bureaucracy and inflated salaries for managers.A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that, despite record spending on health care, cancer survival rates in Britain are worse than in Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

Survival rates for breast cancer, prostate cancer and cervical cancer were below the average for the 34 developed countries in the study.

Mr Lansley lays the blame for the poor performance on the previous government’s failure to make sure that extra investment in the NHS reached the front line. He claims patient care was ignored in favour of increased salaries and botched computer systems.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Lansley says: “Unfortunately this report shows how much work there is to do to deal with Labour’s legacy of neglect and mismanagement of our NHS.

“They hugely increased spending on the Health Service, but wasted much of it on managers, failed IT projects and unsustainable PFI projects.

“They failed to focus on what really matters – patients – which is why we still have some of the worst cancer outcomes amongst comparable countries.”

Under Labour, spending on the NHS trebled, reaching almost £100 billion in 2009, but money for treating cancer still lags behind much of the rest of the world.

A report by the Policy Exchange think tank last year found that England spent around 5.6 per cent of its health care budget on cancer care, compared with 7.7 per cent in France, 9.6 per cent in Germany and 9.2 per cent in America.

In September it emerged that private finance initiatives, introduced by Labour to fund capital projects, have left 60 NHS hospitals on the “brink of financial collapse”. Meanwhile, the pay of NHS chief executives has risen, with typical earnings now more than £150,000.

The OECD figures reveal that the best breast cancer survival rates were in the US, where 89.3 per cent of women were alive five years after being diagnosed. The average across all OECD countries was 83.5 per cent, while in the UK it was 81.3 per cent.

Survival rates for cervical cancer were worse. Norway topped the table with 78.2 per cent still alive after five years, compared with 58 per cent of women in the UK. There were also more hospital admissions for asthma and other lung conditions than the average and infant mortality was higher.

The report also showed that consultations by doctors have fallen, and were below he OECD average in 2009.

Katherine Murphy, the chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “The NHS provides some excellent care but it does fall down on many counts. We know from patients phoning our helpline that the quality of care that they have experienced can be very poor and sometimes it is downright neglectful.

“Rather than trying to tackle the issue of poor care, the Department of Health is demanding that the NHS makes £20 billion of efficiency savings while spending a million pounds a day on a reform plan that doctors, nurses, patients and NHS managers all say risks irrevocably damaging the NHS.”

From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Cancer-cash-wasted-on-NHS-salaries

Are women being over examined by an over cautious health nanny state?In an uncertain world, we want to believe in the certainty of medicine: that it is omniscient and operates in absolutes. In reality, this is far from the truth. The world of medicine reflects the world we live in; constantly in flux with multifarious contradictions.

Scientists relish this fact. However, for those on the outside, this can be bewildering. We are told one thing one minute, only for it to be ridiculed the next. With its definitions and protocols, medicine serves to give the illusion of stability when, in truth, doctors are all too often unsure.

The furore around breast screening perfectly illustrates this. It began when the Government’s cancer “tsar”, Prof Sir Mike Richards, announced that he is setting up an independent review of the NHS programme.

He has also ordered that patient leaflets, which explain the screening programme, be rewritten to take into account claims by some experts that the benefits have been exaggerated.

Understandably, this has prompted widespread confusion. The issue of breast cancer is always emotive. When I worked in breast surgery, I saw first hand the horrors of this disease on sufferers and their families, and it is vital that we do everything we can to treat and prevent it. But the debate over screening has been raging for some time within the medical community. I remember attending a lecture on this issue when I was at medical school more than 10 years ago.

The NHS screening programme was introduced by the Thatcher government following the 1987 Forrest Report, which recommended a national screening programme for breast cancer for women aged between 50 and 74. The report was based on the most up-to-date research.

But, since then, by comparing countries that have a screening programme with those that don’t, evidence has emerged suggesting that the steady fall in mortality in Western countries is not due to the screening programme, but to improved treatment and service provision.

If this is shown to be true – and it’s still a big if – then this would mean we are needlessly screening thousands of women. And there is an argument that many of the tumours detected by screening would not actually have developed into a life-threatening cancer.

For every screening test, whatever the disease, there is a margin of error. How good a test is can boil down to two things. The first is sensitivity, which measures how good the test is at giving a positive result in those who have the disease. The second is specificity, which refers to how many of those tested are disease-free and test negative.

Now, if you act on the results every time a test records a positive – in the case of breast cancer by doing invasive surgery or giving radiotherapy or chemotherapy – the sensitivity and specificity has to be very high (as near to 100 per cent as possible) to warrant a national screening programme. If it’s not sensitive enough, you’ll be giving women false reassurance when, in fact, tumours are being missed. Similarly, if it’s not specific enough, you’ll be needlessly treating people, with all the associated risks that treatment brings. It is this that is concerning some experts.

They argue that women are being over-diagnosed and over-treated because screening is not specific enough. It can pick up breast abnormalities that may look worrying when biopsied but are actually harmless. It’s a balancing act between saving lives and not causing harm by needless treatment. While doctors are used to adapting to changes in evidence, this is little consolation to women who worry about the disease.

It is perfectly sensible to have an independent review of the research, but I can’t help but think of the women who have had treatment,or are facing treatment, or those who are deciding if they should go for screening. The fact that the current debate waging in the medical establishment is part of the reflexive process that underpins science is of little comfort to them.

Let’s deal firmly with those who fail in patient care

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley should be congratulated – and it’s not often I say that – for his announcement last week that widespread spot checks on hospitals and care homes will be introduced in a drive to improve standards.

The checks will be undertaken by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). It comes after the Government reviewed the findings of the first wave of unannounced visits to care of the elderly wards in the summer. Over half the hospitals inspected had problems, particularly in relation to issues around patient dignity.

Spot checks are the way to tackle this and weed out bad practice and serious failings. But, they will only have any meaning if the CQC – often felt by those campaigning for improved standards as toothless – act on what they find. We don’t need endless reports and bureaucratic stalling. If it will work, the CQC will have to use its muscle. Those in charge of wards and hospitals found to be failing must be held accountable and dealt with firmly.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/the-ifs-and-buts-of-breast-screening

Two Aspirn pills a day for two years reduced the incidence of bowel cancer by 63% in a group of 861 at-risk patients, a study reported in The Lancet said.Newcastle University’s Prof Sir John Burn, who led the study, said the evidence “seems overwhelmingly strong”.

Other experts said the findings added to a growing body of proof that aspirin could be used in the fight with cancer.

The study was conducted on 861 patients with Lynch syndrome, which affects one in every 1,000 people.

They struggle to detect and repair damaged DNA which means they are more likely to develop a range of cancers including those of the bowel, womb and stomach.

When looking at all patients in the trial, those in the group given 600 milligrams of aspirin every day developed 19 tumours compared to 34 tumours in the other “control” group, a reduction of 44%.

When the researchers looked at just those patients who took the medication for at least two years the reduction was 63%.

There was also an effect on other cancers linked to Lynch syndrome, which fell by half in the treatment group.

Prof Sir John Burn, from Newcastle University, said there were 30,000 adults in the UK with Lynch syndrome.

If all were given the treatment he said it would prevent 10,000 cancers over 30 years and he speculated that this could possibly prevent 1,000 deaths from the disease.

However, there would also be side effects.

“If we can prevent 10,000 cancers in return for 1,000 ulcers and 100 strokes, in most people’s minds that’s a good deal,” he said.

“People who’ve got a clear family history of, particularly, bowel cancer should seriously consider adding low dose aspirin to their routine and particularly those people who’ve got a genetic predisposition.”

Other studies over the past two decades have suggested the pain killer reduced cancer risk, but this was the first randomised control trial, specifically for aspirin in cancer, to prove it.

In 2010, a study suggested patients given aspirin had a 25% lower risk of death during that trial.

Prof Peter Rothwell, from Oxford University, who conducted that study said the latest research “certainly helps to build a consistent picture, all pointing in the same direction that there is a link with cancer”.

Cancer Research UK’s Prof Chris Paraskeva said: “This adds to the growing body of evidence showing the importance of aspirin, and aspirin-like drugs, in the fight against cancer.”

One of the questions asked by the research into aspirin was whether healthy people with no family risks should take the drug.

The lower the risk of heart attack or cancer, the lower the benefit of taking aspirin, yet there are still potentially deadly side effects.

Sir John said that it was a “finely balanced argument” and that he decided the risks were worth it for him.

“I think where we’re headed for is people that are in their 50s and 60s would look very seriously at adding a low dose aspirin to their daily routine because it’s giving protection against cancer, heart attack and stroke.

“But if they do that they’ve got to have their eyes wide open. They will increase their risk of ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeds and very rarely they will have a stroke caused by the aspirin.”

From: http://www.thelancet.com/search/aspirin+cancer

The first new skin cancer treatment since the 1970s has been rejected by the NHS’s rationing body, in a decision branded a “death sentence” for patients.Clinical trials had shown that half of those who were given the drug were still alive a year later, twice as many as those given an alternative treatment.

The drug, called ipilimumab, works by teaching the immune system how to tackle melanomas and was widely seen as an important advance on “old-fashioned” chemotherapy.

But in draft guidance NICE- the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure has recommended that NHS trusts do not prescribe the treatment, because it costs about £80,000 per patient and because it had doubts over the research data.

It means that unless the manufacturer cuts the price, the only way that the growing number of advanced melanoma sufferers can access the drug is by applying to the Government’s Cancer Drugs Fund.

The decision comes after a provocative academic report claimed that some expensive cancer drugs are “futile” as they cost a lot and cause toxic side-effects yet only give dying patients a few more weeks to live.

In a joint statement, the support group Factor 50 and charity SKCIN said: “The breakthrough that patients and clinicians throughout the UK have been waiting for has arrived in the form of this drug.”

“Standard treatments that have been available since the 1970s are ineffective and to deny this drug to patients, many of whom are young and with very young families, has undoubtedly handed them down a death sentence.”

“To have come so close to a breakthrough and to be told no at this stage is truly devastating.”

Dr Pippa Corrie, Consultant Medical Oncologist at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, added: “Licensing of this drug for use in the UK marked a step change in melanoma patient care, and whilst the Nice decision is predictable, it is disappointing.

“It is essential that we all work to avoid any negative impact on facilitating patient access to this drug. Our patients have waited too long already.”

Rates of skin cancer are rising faster than any other type of the disease in Britain and it affects teenagers and young adults more than any other group.

Almost 12,000 people now develop the most serious kind, malignant melanoma, every year and about 2,000 will die after it spreads across the body.

For the past 30 years the only treatment has been a type of chemotherapy called dacarbazine which is not seen as particularly effective and leaves patients tired and at greater risk of infection.

The new treatment, marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb as Yervoy, is taken in just four injections, one every three weeks and is said to have fewer side-effects.

In a trial on patients who had undergone prior therapy for skin cancer, 46 per cent who took the new drug were still alive after a year compared with 25 per cent who had not taken it.

In addition, 24 per cent were still alive at two years compared with 14 per cent of those who did not take the drug, and the median survival was 10.1 months compared with 6.4 months among those who did not take it.

But Nice, which assesses whether or not new treatments should be widely available on the NHS in England and Wales, has recommended against its use.

Sir Andrew Dillon, its chief executive, said: “We need to be sure that new treatments provide sufficient benefits to patients to justify the significant cost the NHS is being asked to pay.”

He said the evidence showed that ipilimumab was only effective for a “small percentage” of patients, it was not clear how long its effects last, and that it was linked to “a number of adverse reactions”.

“The Committee considered all these factors and concluded that, on the basis of the evidence provided so far, ipilimumab could not be considered a cost-effective use of NHS resources.”

But he added that the decision is open to public consultation while the manufacturer can offer to cut the cost.

Amadou Diarra, European Vice President and General Manager at Bristol-Myers Squibb UK, said: “We are fully committed to demonstrating that Yervoy represents real value for money to the NHS, and we will be submitting further evidence the hope that Nice will reconsider this decision so that all patients with metastatic melanoma can access this potentially life-extending treatment.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Death-sentence-as-NHS-watchdog-rejects-skin-cancer-drug

Fair skinned people who are prone to sunburn may need to take health supplements to ensure they get enough vitamin D, say experts.It appears that those with pale skin, while not deficient, may still be lacking in the essential vitamin that the body makes from sunlight.

The Cancer Research UK charity say that even with a lot of sun exposure, those with fair skin may not be able to make enough vitamin D.

And too much sun causes skin cancer.

Clearly, for this reason, increasing sun exposure is not the way to achieve higher vitamin D levels in the fair-skinned population, say the researchers. But taking supplements could be.

Their work examined 1,200 people.

Of these, 730 were found to have “lower than optimal” vitamin D levels – and many of these were people with very pale, freckled skin.

Supplements are already recommended for groups at higher risk of deficiency. This includes people with dark skin, such as people of African-Caribbean and South Asian origin, and people who wear full-body coverings, as well as the elderly, young children, pregnant and breastfeeding women and people who avoid the sun.

Based on the latest findings, it appears that pale-skinned people should be added to this list.

Vitamin D is important for healthy bones and teeth.

A level less than 25nmol/L in the blood is a deficiency, but experts increasingly believe that lower than 60nmol/L are suboptimal and can also be damaging to health.

Most people get enough vitamin D with short exposures to the sun (10 to 15 minutes a day). A small amount also comes from the diet in foods like oily fish and dairy products.

But people with fair skin do not seem to be able to get enough, according to Prof Julia Newton-Bishop and her team at the University of Leeds.

Part of the reason might be that people who burn easily are more likely to cover up and avoid the sun.

But some fair-skinned individuals also appear to be less able to make and process vitamin D in the body, regardless of how long they sit in the sun for.

Hazel Nunn, of Cancer Research UK, explains how to increase vitamin D levels if you’re pale

Prof Newton-Bishop said: “It’s very difficult to give easy advice that everyone can follow. There’s no one-size-fits-all.  However, fair-skinned individuals who burn easily are not able to make enough vitamin D from sunlight and so may need to take vitamin D supplements.”

Hazel Nunn, of Cancer Research UK, said: “It is about striking a balance between the benefits and harms of sun exposure.

“People with fair skin are at higher risk of developing skin cancer and should take care to avoid over-exposure to the sun’s rays.  If people are concerned about their vitamin D levels, they should see their doctor who may recommend a vitamin D test.”

From:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15151930

A drug that can give advanced prostate cancer sufferers an extra two months to live has been rejected by the NHS’s rationing body.The National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (Nice) said that the medicine, called cabazitaxel, was not a cost-effective treatment for men who have already undergone hormone therapy.

It said that although the drug did extend survival for patients with advanced prostate cancer, it was “concerned” about the side-effects experienced in clinical trials and that at an average cost of £22,000 per patient it was too expensive.

The move comes after an important study commissioned by The Lancet Oncology warned that the cost of cancer care is becoming unsustainable in developed countries, and that it makes no sense to keep giving “toxic” and costly drugs to patients with just a few weeks to live.

Sir Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of Nice, said: “The committee concluded that cabazitaxel would not be a cost effective use of limited NHS resources.”

But Owen Sharp, chief executive of the Prostate Cancer Charity, said: “Cabazitaxel is an important treatment, only recently licensed for use here in the UK, which can help to extend the lives of men in the final stages of prostate cancer for whom existing treatments have stopped working.

“These men currently have very few treatment options open to them when their cancer reaches this advanced stage. Increasing the number of treatments that may extend the lives of these men and allow them to spend precious time with their families is essential.”

Prostate cancer is the most common form of the disease among British men, with 37,000 cases diagnosed every year.

Some men live for years with slow-growing tumours, but in other cases it develops aggressively and kills after spreading to other organs.

Treatments often attempt to reduce the production of testosterone, a hormone that fuels the growth of the tumours, but patients can develop resistance to this type of therapy.

In clinical trials, men with advanced prostate cancer who were given cabazitaxel in combination with prednisone, a drug that suppresses the immune system, lived for an extra 10 weeks.

But Nice said there was “uncertainty” about the new drug’s effect on patients’ hearts and livers, and it did not meet its criteria for being considered as an end-of-life drug worthy of additional funding.

It means that anyone who hopes to obtain the new type of chemotherapy on the NHS must make an individual application through the Cancer Drugs Fund.

Nice is still assessing the value of a daily pill that can treat advanced prostate cancer, called abiraterone acetate, which is believed to have kept the Lockerbie bomber alive longer than expected.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-rationing-body-rejects-prostate-cancer-drug

A London hospital’s trial of a prostate cancer drug has been stopped early because it was so successful doctors felt it would be “unethical” to deny the treatment to other patients.Medics halted tests of the life-extending drug because it would have been “unethical” not to offer the treatment to all 922 cancer sufferers taking part in the trial.

Patients who were given the drug found that it eased pain and caused only minor side effects.

The new drug accurately targets tumours using alpha radiation, which doctors conducting the study said is the most effective form of radiation to eliminate cancer because it limits damage to surrounding tissue.

Dr Chris Parker, lead researcher on the project at the Royal Marsden Hospital, said: “It’s more damaging. It takes one, two, three hits to kill a cancer cell compared with thousands of hits for beta particles.”

The drug, Radium-223 Chloride – known as Alpharadin TM – will also do less damage to surrounding tissue because it accurately targets calls, the doctors said.

Speaking at an international gathering of cancer experts, Dr Parker, a consultant clinical oncologist, said: “They have such a tiny range, a few millionths of a metre. So we can be sure that the damage is being done where it should be.”

Patients taking the drug has a 30 per cent lower rate of death compared top patients taking a placebo pill.

“It would have been unethical not to offer the active treatment to those taking placebo,” Dr. Parker said.

Radium-223 has “a completely different safety profile” to chemotherapy, he added.

The trial’s results were presented this week at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm.

The researchers, who have pointed out the urgent need for an effective treatment for prostate cancer, will now submit their findings for approval by regulators.

Prof Gillies McKenna, Cancer Research UK’s radiotherapy expert said: “This appears to be an important study using a highly targeted form of radiation to treat prostate cancer that has spread to the bones.”

“This research looks very promising and could be an important addition to approaches available to treat secondary tumours – and should be investigated further.”

From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Early-success-in-cancer-drug-trial-gives-patients-promising-future

A substance found in a native British flower has been turned into a powerful “smart bomb” drug that can work against a range of cancers.The drug, based on colchicine found in the autumn crocus, cuts off the blood supply to solid tumours, curbing their growth and stopping cancer cells from spreading to other parts of the body.

Tests on laboratory mice have shown that the drug is highly effective at attacking tumours from a range of human diseases such as sarcomas and cancers of the breast, colon, lung and prostate.

The drug is also designed to target solid tumours directly, leaving healthy tissue unaffected, according to Professor Laurance Patterson, director of Bradford University’s Institute for Cancer Therapeutics.

“What we’ve designed is, effectively, a ‘smart bomb’ that can be targeted directly at any solid tumour to kill it without appearing to harm healthy tissue,” Professor Patterson said.

“What is also new about our approach is that we are effectively targeting the blood supply of the tumour,” he said. “If you can starve the tumour of that blood supply, then you can shut off its ability to grow and, indeed, you also shut off its ability to move around the body.”

The drug is well known as having anti-cancer properties, but is normally toxic to healthy cells and so has had limited potential in medicine.

The trick used by the Bradford scientists is to attach colchicine to another molecule that renders the drug inactive until it comes into contact with a one of a class of enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), which are used uniquely by tumours to burrow into the body’s healthy tissue, said Kevin Adams of the Bradford institute.

“The drug is inactive until triggered by the activity of an enzyme that is always found in the tumour environment but not elsewhere. Triggering releases a potent, anti-cancer agent which destroys the tumour’s blood vessels, effectively starving the tumours to death, a process known as haemorrhagic necrosis,” Dr Adams said. Tests on specially bred mice that have human cancerous tumours have shown that the drug and its delivery system can have a “cure rate” of greater than 70 per cent after a single dose, he said. Four different cancers have been treated and the animals suffered no adverse effects.

The next stage is a phase 1 clinical trial to test its initial safety, which is hoped to be conducted within 18 months at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/crocus-offers-scientists-hope-in-the-battle-against-cancer