Manchester
The Manchester Cancer Research Centre
In January 2006, the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research joined forces with the Christie Hospital NHS Trust and the University of Manchester to form the Manchester Cancer Research Centre.
The Centre is a unique partnership, which plans to double research activity in the city over the next few years. It will create outstanding facilities where doctors and scientists can work closely together, allowing scientific advances to be turned into benefits for people with cancer faster.
By 2015, the Centre aims to be one of the world’s leading cancer research institutes.
The Paterson Institute for Cancer Research
The Paterson Institute for Cancer Research is based at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. It is one of the world’s largest cancer research institutes attached to a hospital. It is largely supported by Cancer Research UK and employs over 200 researchers who are dedicated to helping fight this disease.
- discovering the causes of drug resistance in people with bowel cancer
- identifying new drug targets for leukaemia so we can treat people with the disease more effectively
- studying the molecular processes that drive the growth and spread of cancer cells.
Find out more about our Cancer Research UK-funded work at the Paterson Institute.
Improving imaging techniques
The Christie Hospital is one of the leading specialist cancer hospitals in Europe. An exciting new £20 million centre called the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre has been built at the hospital, jointly funded by a number of organisations including Cancer Research UK. We contributed £1.5 million towards the building costs and a further half a million for the purchase of equipment.
The Imaging Centre specialises in the application of a powerful scanning tool called PET (positron emission tomography). This technique allows doctors to watch, in real time, the action of drugs on a patient's tumour. This approach will allow researchers to quickly determine if a new drug is working or not, allowing them to change treatments if necessary. It also allows them to monitor the effect of the drug with minimal discomfort to the patient. PET will help us to reduce the time it takes to put drugs through clinical trials as we will know much sooner if a drug is likely to be effective
Immune therapy for cancer
Researchers at the Cancer Research UK Department of Medical Oncology at The Christie Hospital take promising discoveries from the laboratory and develop them into potential new treatments for cancer. The department is directed by Professor Robert Hawkins
Together with researchers at the Paterson Institute, Professor Hawkins and his team are developing ways to trick the body’s immune system into destroying cancer cells. They are currently developing new treatments for bowel, stomach, pancreatic and lung cancer.
Identifying the causes of children's cancer
There are more than 40 different kinds of childhood cancers but the underlying causes of most are still unknown. Professor Jillian Birch, director of the Cancer Research UK Paediatric and Familial Cancer Research Group, is working to identify the causes of these diseases.
Since September 1954, the Manchester Children’s Tumour Registry (MCTR) has been documenting every case of childhood cancer in the North West of England. It provides nearly five decades of data on childhood cancers and is an invaluable resource for all researchers working in this field.
Professor Birch’s team is using this data to identify common features - including genetic and environmental factors - among children with cancer in order to identify possible causes. This work will lead to new opportunities for treatment and prevention.
Improving treatment of children's cancer
Childhood cancer is quite rare, affecting around 1 in 500 children under the age of 15 in Britain. The small numbers of patients, particularly those with rare childhood cancers, mean that collaborative clinical trials are essential if treatment is to rapidly improve.
We fund the clinical trials work of the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG). The group co-ordinates the care of virtually all the UK’s children with cancer, ensuring they receive the most up-to-date treatments. Children involved in clinical trials tend to do better and the CCLG has greatly improved recruitment in recent years. The CCLG runs trials at 21 paediatric centres throughout the British Isles, including the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.
Professor Vaskar Saha heads the Cancer Research UK Children’s Cancer Research Group in Manchester. The group is studying acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. They are uncovering how genetic differences influence why some children with the disease respond well to chemotherapy while others do not. They hope to use this information to improve survival in these children.
Find more of our research in the north of England.
