World Cancer Day 2024

1 February 2024

Sunday 4^th February is World Cancer Day, and we would like to take this opportunity to look back at our achievements since the Barts Centre for Squamous Cancer was first funded by Barts Charity in 2021.

To strengthen our three research themes of (1) Health Systems Strengthening for Health Promotion and Squamous Cancer Prevention, (2) Molecular Diagnostics and Prognostics, and (3) Better Treatments for Advanced Disease, the initial consolidation phase saw the successful recruitment of three new academic staff members who bring with them excellence and expertise in three different areas of squamous cancer research.

• Epidemiology of oral cancer – Prof Manu Mathur (Professor, started March 2022)
• Molecular carcinogenesis – Dr Gernot Walko (Non-clinical Senior lecturer, started October 2022)
• Translational cancer research – Dr Ana Caetano (Clinical Senior lecturer, started January 2023)
• Three core facilities were created to support our collaborative research efforts. These include a tissue bank, bioinformatics support, and spatial omics support.

 

Our annual Research Symposia have attracted well over 200 attendees and high-profile international speakers. For example, in 2023 we hosted Prof Paolo Dotto, a world leader on research into squamous cancer of the skin. You can watch a recording of our 2023 symposium here: Annual symposium 2023 - Centre for Squamous Cancer (qmul.ac.uk)

 

Our Centre members have been busy talking about their research at national and international conferences. For example, Professors Suzanne Scott and Manu Mathur presented at the FDI World Dental Congress 2023, Science Committee Forum on ‘New strategies for the prevention and management of oral cancer: the crucial role of dentists and dental teams’ (Items - BCSC members at the FDI World Dental Congress - Centre for Squamous Cancer (qmul.ac.uk)). In addition, our Centre members engaged with the media about important topics such as the global rise in skin cancer cases (https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/skin-cancer-rising) and animal-free cancer research (https://www.animalfreeresearchuk.org/tag/dr-adrian-biddle/).

 

Training the next generation of cancer researchers is also part of our mission. Consequently, all our academic staff members are contributing to teaching on various courses across the degree programmes offered by Queen Mary’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.

 

Of course, ultimately it’s our research that we hope will make the biggest impact on the lives of people diagnosed with squamous cancers. Summarized below are the findings of three research projects that could hold great promise for improving diagnostics and treatment of squamous cancers:

 

• Dr Muy-Teck Teh: A rapid PCR test for early mouth cancer detection. Currently, there is no test that can rapidly identify mouth cancer in patients with suspicious oral lesions, and patients often must wait up to 21 days for their biopsy test results. This leads to patient anxiety, stress, burden on time and resources, delayed treatment, and poor patient outcome. To overcome this problem, Dr Muy-Teck Teh and his team members have invented a molecular diagnostic PCR test that can produce diagnostic results within 90 minutes from a tiny 1mm tissue biopsy. The test, named qMIDS, has been validated in geographically and ethnically diverse patient cohorts from Norway, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan and China. The team is currently working on incorporating artificial intelligence to automate mouth cancer diagnosis. https://oraclecancertrust.org/curenetics-queen-mary-university

 

• Dr Jun (Alex) Wang: Predicting the risk of metastatic spread of squamous cancer of the skin. A nationwide, cross-disciplinary effort led by researchers in the Barts Centre for Squamous Cancer has developed a tool that predicts whether squamous cancer of the skin will spread. This could assist doctors in better treating individuals most at risk of aggressive disease. Teams in London, Glasgow, Southampton, and Gloucestershire amassed samples from more than 200 people with squamous cancer of the skin. Together, they harnessed machine learning to create a model that uses the activity of 20 genes to predict the risk of cancer spreading with more than 85% accuracy – surpassing current, unreliable human assessments of tumour diagnostic tissue. Ultimately, this tool could guide how we harness new immunotherapies for this type of skin cancer and help more people to survive their disease for longer. https://www.bartscancer.london/general-news/2023/10/new-tool-predicts-risk-of-skin-cancer-spread-more-accurately-than-human-inspection-2/

 

• Dr Adrian Biddle: A new machine learning algorithm to help identify whether oral cancer will spread. When oral squamous cancer metastasises – that is, when tumour cells invade other parts of the body – they typically do so by first colonizing the lymph nodes present in the neck. As this event significantly reduces chances of survival, oral squamous cancer patients often have their neck lymph nodes removed to prevent the spread of the disease. Evidence from lab-grown human cells and mice studies suggest that, in oral squamous cancer, metastasis occurs when some cells in the original tumour go through a process called the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT for short) and detach. Using three different markers of EMT and analysing over 12,000 images from 74 tumours obtained from surgeries, Dr Biddle’s team found that, in the metastatic samples, the cells detaching from primary tumours were more likely to express these three proteins. Using these images to train a machine learning algorithm and then applying it to data from new oral squamous cancer patients, the programme was able to predict whether their tumours would spread with 89% accuracy. https://elifesciences.org/digests/90298/ who-will-be-on-the-move