News digest – tobacco toll, coffee and skin cancer, mouth cancer treatment, and more

• Most of the UK public know that smoking causes lung cancer but struggle to list many of the other cancers associated with the habit, according to a Cancer Research UK survey published this week (here’s our press release). This graphic highlights that the tobacco toll extends far beyond just lung cancer, and serves as a powerful reminder of the need to help people who want to quit and to discourage the next generation of smokers:

• The results of our survey were published to celebrate the fifth anniversary of England going smoke free in pubs, bars and public spaces. This piece in the Guardian discusses the growing evidence revealing the health benefits of this move, including a drop in heart attack emergency admissions in hospitals –  something that’s been seen in other places that have brought in similar laws. We know that the effect on cancer rates will take longer to kick in.

• It’s been a busy week for tobacco stories, with news that the Government has extended its consultation on standardising cigarette packaging. Tens of thousands of Cancer Research UK supporters have already told the Government they want plain packs and clear majorities back the move in opinion polls. We will use this extra time to gather even more support.

• Moving into the lab, US researchers found that healthy cells in the tumour ‘microenvironment’ could be giving tumours an innate ability to resist cancer drugs, even before treatment starts. As our expert commented in the coverage, on the surface this looks like a daunting discovery. But work like this gives us hope – it shows we can start to unpick these resistance mechanisms early on, even before a new drug is widely used in the clinic. Nature News also covered the research.

• A protein that is overactive in aggressive mouth cancers and encourages tumours to grow could be a target for new treatments for the disease, according to new findings from our scientists this week (press release). The work is only in the lab at this stage, but what’s really exciting is that we already have potential drugs that can target this protein.

• Across the Atlantic, we noticed that the American Cancer Society has called for the Surgeon General to conduct a study on the impact of sugar-sweetened drinks on health, saying such drinks play a major role in the nation’s obesity crisis. As more than one in 20 cancers in the UK is linked to being overweight or obese, we thought this story would be a good opportunity to plug our Ten Top Tips for a healthy weight.

• US research showing that people who drank the most caffeine had a smaller chance of developing the most common type of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma (BCC), doesn’t mean that “a cup of coffee a day can help keep skin cancer at bay”. It’s a bit more subtle than that. Importantly, caffeine wasn’t associated with lower risk of malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. And even if caffeine could reduce the risk of developing BCC, drinking coffee wouldn’t be enough to protect you completely. Check our SunSmart pages for more practical tips on how to reduce the risk of skin cancer.

And finally

• Well-endowed ladies may have been alarmed to see several papers announce that “women with bigger breasts DO have [a] higher risk of breast cancer”. In fact, the story is based on results from a genetic study that didn’t actually look at breast size and cancer risk, as explained by the NHS Choices blog. It looks like the biggest boobs in the news this week are these misleading headlines…