Dr. Charles Craddock is Professor of Haemato-oncology at the University of Birmingham and the Academic Director of the Centre for Clinical Haematology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. He also leads the UK Haemato-oncology Trials Acceleration Programme and is the co-founder of Cure Leukaemia.
On April 12, CRINA held a free public lecture with blood cancer expert Dr. Charles Craddock as the keynote speaker. Craddock leads the UK Haemato-oncology Trials Acceleration Programme (TAP). TAP was launched by the UK-based non-profit Bloodwise in 2011 to speed up blood cancer clinical trials. TAP allows for a more rapid assessment of the safety and efficacy of new treatments. With this program, novel treatments go from development to adoption faster, thus improving patient care. The TAP model is also generally applicable to other diseases.
A number of CRINA members also have an interest in blood cancers and three of these investigators shared their research at the public event. CRINA members include clinicians and cancer researchers across a variety of disciplines who are working to improve patient care through excellence in research.
Dr. Robert Ingham and Dr. Michael Chu both presented research that focused on the human immune system and cancer. The immune system is normally responsible for protecting the body from infection. However, mutations in cells of the immune system can give rise to cancers including leukemias and lymphomas. Ingham studies what goes wrong in lymphoma cells that leads to them becoming and persisting as cancers. He hopes that an understanding of the molecular defects in lymphoma cells will help to reveal information that allows for better diagnosis and treatment for patients with leukemias and lymphomas. Chu examines how the immune system can be re-invigorated or reprogrammed to fight cancers. His talk highlighted the fact that not all cancers impact the immune system in the same way. In fact, even individual patients with the same type of cancer can respond to the disease in different ways. That's precisely why cellular therapies are so critical. Therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells can be designed for individual cancers as well as individual patients, allowing for a more effective approach to treatment.
Dr. Qiumin Tan's talk highlighted the patient experience, using one patient's story to demonstrate the interplay between patient engagement and research discoveries in leukemia. Tan shared the story of a patient with autism and a history of leukemia, and how the patient's family's search for answers inspired a new vein of research that led to the discovery of a new genetic disorder associated with leukemia predisposition.
With public events like this lecture, CRINA looks to engage with the community and highlight the latest research in cancer biology, treatment and prevention. Dr. Charles Serhan will be visiting for a talk in November 2019. Serhan's research looks to identify novel molecules and pathways involved in inflammation, which plays a key role in cancer development. A deeper understanding of how to prevent and resolve inflammation has the potential to lead to novel cancer treatments.
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