It’s the developed world’s biggest killer disease – every two minutes someone is diagnosed with cancer in the UK*. But why do so many develop the disease that is expected to affect one in three of us** at some point in our lifetime?
Cancer specialists from the University of Aberdeen and NHS Grampian will be giving an insight into the disease this Monday (January 17) at the first in a brand new series of the University’s popular Café Med talks.
The café at the Suttie Centre building at Foresterhill in Aberdeen is the venue for the informal free talk which is aimed at the public and takes place between 6pm and 8pm.
Monday’s speakers are Dr Andy Schofield, an award winning breast cancer researcher at the University, and consultant medical oncologist Dr Marianne Nicolson from NHS Grampian, who chairs the UK National Cancer Research Institute lung cancer clinical study group.
Dr Schofield, who is also part of the University’s public engagement team, said: “I’ll be giving a brief overview of the science of cancer – what makes a normal cell become a cancerous cell. What makes good cells go bad.
“I’ll also talk about some of the research underway to develop individualised therapies as opposed to a ‘one size fits all’ approach for cancer patients.”
Dr Nicolson added: “The challenge of cancer medicine is of course to diagnose the illness earlier and improve cure rates. For people with any stage of cancer, recent improvements in personalised therapy are encouraging. I shall give some clinical examples of progress in this field and touch on the challenges of affording the new treatments.”
Café Medis supported by a Science Engagement grant from the Scottish Government. For more information about the Café series please see: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/science/cafescience/