Every day in the UK 450 people die of cancer. At Manchester, donations are crucial to helping us beat this deadly disease.
Every day, 450 people in the UK die of cancer. At Manchester, we’re committed to beating this deadly disease #WorldCancerDay Click To Tweet Research breakthroughs at Manchester have already benefited 1.5 million breast cancer patients #WorldCancerDay Click To Tweet Donations to The University of Manchester are helping us to develop exciting new personalised treatments for cancer #WorldCancerDay Click To TweetMore of us are developing cancer than ever before. It’s now estimated that one in two of us will get the disease at some point in our lives.
Although the incidence rates of cancer are increasing, so too are the survival rates. In 1971–72, five year survival rates were only 25% in England and Wales. By 2010–2011, that had doubled to 49%.
Despite this however, every day in the UK, around 450 people will die of the illness. So we clearly have a lot of work left to do.
And there’s no better place to do this work than Manchester.
The perfect place for cancer research
We have the critical mass of scientists, doctors and infrastructure, alongside a diverse population, with higher than average incidence of cancer to mean we are perfectly positioned to lead the global fight against cancer.
The University is central to this collaborative effort, and our strong links with local hospitals and NHS trusts means our world-class researchers work side-by-side with clinicians and patients.
As well as this, we also have the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, where we work with colleagues from Cancer Research UK and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust to create better, more effective treatments for cancer patients.
This approach is already leading to many research breakthroughs.
Research breakthroughs
For example, our trials led to the drug anastrozole replacing tamoxifen as the major endocrine therapy for breast cancer – a move which has already benefited over 1.5 million women globally.
Over the last 20 years, our work in childhood leukaemia, the most common cancer in children, has meant that 85% of children diagnosed with the most common form of leukaemia are cured – a rate which is among the best in the world.
It is not just in the UK where patients feel the benefit of our research. Our academics and medics are working around the world where the need is greatest. In Uganda, for example, where they are helping to roll out a national programme of cervical cancer screening.
At Manchester, we are committed to beating cancer. But we can’t do this without generous donations from our alumni and supporters.
Donations to the University support PhD students doing vital research, the equipment necessary to conduct the research, and even the buildings and labs where it can take place.
A new way of treating cancer
One of the most exciting areas where donations are supporting ground-breaking work is our research into cancer biomarkers.
We know that cancer is not just one disease, but that there are over 200 different types. What’s clear now is that the one-size-fits-all treatments that we’ve used in the past are not up to scratch.
What we need is personalised treatments: medicine that targets the patient’s specific type of cancer.
This exciting new way of fighting cancer can lead to higher survival rates, lower recurrence rates, and also treatments with fewer horrendous side effects.
There have already been isolated cases of this approach working and helping patients, but much more needs to be done before this type of treatment becomes commonplace.
Donations from people like you can help us conduct ground-breaking research in this area of cancer and many others.
Find out more about what we’re doing to fight cancer in Manchester, and how donations are enabling our work