News digest – lung cancer ‘Matrix’ trial, tumour goggles, 3D-printed cancer cells and more

• Our big news this week was the launch of the ambitious second stage of our Stratified Medicine Programme. Based around an important new clinical trial for lung cancer patients, we’ll be using advanced genetic testing to group patients based on shared genetic faults and offer potential treatments to those groups. Sky News and the Independent were among the many media outlets to cover the announcement and you can read more about the trial in this blog post.
• UK researchers revealed that exposing prostate cancer cells to cholesterol could result in the cells changing shape and being more able to spread to the bone. The Express covered the research, which could explain why taking statins – commonly used cholesterol-lowering drugs – is thought to slow the progress of the disease in some cases.
• The BBC covered an interesting bit of technology in the form of some goggles that could be used in surgery to spot a dye that sticks to cancer cells, potentially increasing the precision of operations. The technology is still in its early stages though, and trials involving many more patients will be needed before the goggles could be routinely used in surgery.
• This Telegraph article covered the impact our research and clinical trials are having in the treatment of prostate cancer.
• The national human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme has reduced the number of sexually active young women in England who are infected with the two forms of the virus that cause most cases of cervical cancer. The Information Daily has more.
• And this article from The Guardian covered an announcement from the World Health Organisation (WHO) explaining that giving two doses of the HPV vaccine to girls under 15 – rather than the three currently used in the UK – would provide sufficient protection against infection. This could be important for achieving higher vaccination rates in poorer countries where cervical cancer is a major health problem, as well as saving costs.

And finally

• Scientists from the US and China have 3D-printed cancer cells onto a scaffold of proteins to form a lab-based model of a tumour. This is a fascinating approach and could be used to more accurately mimic the three-dimensional world a cancer cell normally finds itself in. See Wired for more details.

Nick