Professor Jenny Seligmann, Consultant Medical Oncologist and Professor of Gastrointestinal Oncology at the Trust will co-lead the team in Leeds. She will be working with Professor David Sebag-montefiore, Dr Nick West, Professor David Cairns and Dr Christopher Williams from the Trust and the University of Leeds.
The CRC-STARS initiative will bring together 40 research experts from across the UK, including those from the University of Leeds, Spain, Italy and Belgium to find kinder, better treatments for the disease, which kills 16,800 people in the UK every year. Joining forces will enable them to use their combined expertise across multiple research areas, and pair clinical trial data with cutting-edge technology.
Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in the UK. Despite this, treatment options remain limited, particularly for patients who are diagnosed at later stages of the disease.
CRC-STARS is jointly funded by Cancer Research UK (£1.7m), the Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK (£1.7m), philanthropic support from Bjorn Saven CBE and Inger Saven (£1m), and the Scientific Foundation of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (FC-AECC, €600,000 (~£500,000).
Professor Jenny Seligmann said, “We are delighted to be working with our colleagues across the UK and beyond in this new research partnership. Connecting early-stage discovery scientists working in laboratories with clinical researchers working in hospitals and other clinical settings will allow us to look at bowel cancer in a more sophisticated way than ever before. This will hopefully lead to better, more tailored treatments for this type of cancer and better patient outcomes.”