Sarah Blagden, Professor of Experimental Oncology at the university, is leading the trial.<\/p>\n
She said many people with LFS develop multiple forms of cancer in succession. <\/p>\n
“It’s more than just a risk of cancer, it’s like a biological guarantee,” she said. <\/p>\n
The study has been funded by Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council and The George Pantziarka TP53 Trust.<\/p>\n
It is considering the use of Metformin, a drug routinely used to treat diabetes, after successful lab studies in the US. <\/p>\n
Blagden said: “We have in our cells ‘organelles’, little structures called mitochondria, and they help convert our food into energy.<\/p>\n
“We know with somebody with LFS that their mitochondria are overactive and so Metformin tunes that down, preventing the damage to the cell.”<\/p>\n
Blagden hopes focusing on the specific cell mutations in LFS – known as P53 mutations – will help in the bigger picture of tackling cancer.<\/p>\n
She said: “P53 mutations are commonly seen in all types of cancers and when they occur, they often signify that the cancer is more aggressive. <\/p>\n
“So for us it’s really important to understand why that mutation not only starts LFS, but makes other cancers more aggressive.”<\/p>\n
The team hopes to develop a vaccine that can be used to protect people once they get a LFS diagnosis.<\/p>\n
Blagden said: “The plan would be to use the samples that we’ve collected to really help us engineer the perfect off-the-shelf vaccine that we can give to protect people from cancer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah Blagden, Professor of Experimental Oncology at the university, is leading the trial. She said many people with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-749167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}