Brighton
Improving quality of life for people with cancer
Professor Lesley Fallowfield is the director of the Cancer Research UK Psychosocial Oncology Group at the University of Sussex. The Group aims to improve quality of life for people with cancer. Their work tackles many different areas including
- improving communication between health care professionals and cancer patients
- developing ways for health professionals to talk to patients about clinical trials
- understanding the information needs of people with brain tumours
- examining the use of complementary therapies in cancer
The team’s work on doctor-patient communication has been very successful. They have already developed a training course to improve the communication and counselling skills of cancer doctors. This course is being introduced throughout the UK and has received interest worldwide.
The team are planning a trial that will examine whether using acupuncture can relieve a side effect of treatment for head and neck cancer. Radiotherapy given for this type of cancer can often damage the salivary glands, leading to a chronically dry mouth. They will compare acupuncture with the current standard treatment to see if acupuncture can relieve this common side effect.
Understanding how cells divide
All cells undergo a process called cell division. In cancer, cell division goes out of control, often because there is something wrong with the genes controlling it.
Dr Sally Wheatley of the Genome Damage and Stability Centre at the University of Sussex is investigating a possible cause of cancer called aneuploidy. This means that cells have the wrong number of genes. This occurs when cell division goes wrong and genes are not evenly shared between the two new cells.
