A Blackburn scientist is urging people to back life-saving research and sign up to Race for Life after losing his mum to the disease.
Dominic Rothwell, Deputy Director at the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre in Manchester, is encouraging people in his hometown to take part in the Race for Life event at Witton Park, Blackburn on Wednesday June 12.
Dominic Rothwell, Deputy Director at the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre in Manchester, is encouraging people in his hometown to take part in the Race for Life event at Witton Park, Blackburn on Wednesday June 12.
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00:00Hi, I'm Dominic Rothwell, I'm the Deputy Director of the CRUK National Biomarker Centre, which
00:10is the building that we're in now.
00:13I've worked in cancer research in Manchester for over 20 years.
00:18Since the last 15 years I've worked in the biomarker sort of field, I've always been
00:23inquisitive and been very interested in science and particularly in cancer research, and as
00:29in most people, as I've got older, then cancer has started to affect my life more and more.
00:33As you're aware, one in two people get affected with family, friends or colleagues.
00:37I personally have lost very close family members, unfortunately recently my last couple of years
00:43my mum, and so I do realise how impactful and how heartbreaking this disease can be,
00:49but I am very fortunate in the job that I do is that I can make that difference with
00:52cancer research funding, I can see that the benefits that we translate from the research
00:57that we do into patients, and we work closely with the Christie Hospital and we really do
01:02get to see those tangible differences.
01:08So when I'm talking about biomarkers, what we mostly work on here is signals that we
01:13find in blood of cancer patients, which are released from the cancer and we can use them
01:17to detect the presence or the response of the cancer in patients, and so we use lots
01:23of different technologies which allow us to pick up these signals which can be very, very
01:26low and so we have to use lots of cutting edge approaches, but we are improving these
01:32constantly and we're also starting to look in different sorts of fluids, so you can also
01:36look in saliva, in urine, in stool samples, and also we've even started to look in things
01:42like tears, all of which potentially contain these biomarkers which will give us insight
01:46into these cancer patients and potentially improve our treatment options and outcomes
01:51for the patients.
01:54We are very fortunate here, we do world leading research, but the kind of research we do is
01:59very expensive and all of it is funded purely by donations to CRUK and I'm very happy to
02:04support Race for Life, I've done it and I've got friends and family who have been involved
02:08over the years.
02:09It's a fantastic, fun way to help raise money for CRUK and the money that raised will support
02:14research that we do and really will make a difference to cancer patients in the future.