In 2004, your support allowed us to fund a project led by Professor Mark Cragg at the University of Southampton to further our understanding of how drugs could be used to target and destroy cancer cells. His research uncovered important information that contributed to the journey of a targeted cancer drug, which is now available as a treatment option for people with blood cancer.
Thanks to advances in diagnosis and treatment, 12 out of 20 people with blood cancer in the UK will currently survive for 10 years or more. This is a huge improvement from the 1970s when for many blood cancers only 1 in 20 survived their diagnosis for 10 years or longer.
For many years, the main treatment for blood cancer was chemotherapy. Different combinations were pitted against each other to find the most effective regimen. But whatever combinations doctors used, many patients could still not be saved. We needed kinder, more effective treatments.
Then a drug called rituximab appeared. Rituximab targets a molecule that coats the outside of cancer cells – a molecular flag that identifies it as a cancer cell. In combination with chemotherapy, doctors started to see remarkable results - patients survived for longer and with a better quality of life.
But still only a small fraction of patients remained cancer-free. For many people, their cancer would return until it had taken over the patient's entire body.
But scientists were not willing to give up, so they returned to the lab to start new research. Your support allowed Professor Mark Cragg to help advance our understanding of new drugs, demonstrating that they were more powerful than rituximab, and paving the way for clinical trials.
Rituximab works by attaching to a molecule called CD20 found on the surface of certain blood cells. Some blood cancers cells have many more of these CD20 molecules on their surface than normal cells, making the cancer cells stand out from the crowd. When rituximab attaches to the cancer cells, it flags them for destruction.
A better understanding of how these drugs worked allowed researchers to continue to improve on the design. This led to the discovery of a new CD20 targeting drug called obinutuzumab.
In clinical trials, obinituzumab was found to help patients live longer, even when they had developed resistance to other treatments. Following these clinical trials, obinutuzumab was approved in the UK in 2015 for the treatment of certain leukaemias.
Research involving obinutuzumab has continued and doctors can now use the drug to treat other types of blood cancer, including chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and advanced follicular lymphoma.
The work we supported is a small piece of the puzzle that this story represents. But it is an important contribution that helped to complete the picture.
By becoming a Curestarter, you can help us continue to support more bright ideas like Professor Cragg's - allowing us to potentially uncover new knowledge about cancer that could lead to lifesaving new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer.
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