The first Wales Cancer Conference took place in Cardiff City Hall on 30th April and 1st May 2008.
Jointly organised by the Wales Cancer Institute and the Wales Cancer Alliance we welcomed 300 delegates including patients, research nurses, laboratory researchers, policy makers, clinicians and Welsh Assembly Members to the varied 2 day programme.

Upcoming researchers were given the opportunity to showcase their work on the second day in a Young Investigators session where the prize winning talk on "Using an in-vitro MTOR kinase assay to further characterise the MTOR pathway" by Elaine Dunlop give the name set the high standard of the science in Wales. This described a way to understand a key pathway that is often affected in the cancer cell, making the cancer more likely to respond to one treatment rather than another.

The conference began with a talk from Prof Paul Workman of the Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, on "Drugging the cancer genome: Developments in novel therapies" which highlighted two other new approaches to cancer treatment which have been developed in his laboratory and are now in early clinical studies ( that is inhibition of the activity of PI3 kinase, a key signalling pathway, and HSP-90, a nuclear chaperone molecule). This linked with Dr Andy Futreal who is one of the leaders in the Human Genome Project from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge. He showed the way in which the new technology is able to identify major changes (translaocations and rearrangements) in the genetic code of cancer which will help to identify new ways to target treatment. Dennis Slamon, the discoverer of Herceptin from UCLA in California, gave an excellent talk about the discovery of herceptin and the underlying abnormalities in breast cancer that makes it work so effectively in the 20-25% of women whose breast cancer is driven by an amplification of that gene, and how this could further affect decisions about treatment. These talks all poited out the fundamental importance of genetic changes in the cancer cell and that these are a key basis for identifying new targets for therapy and in turn begin to influence how therapies can be chosen to fit the patient's needs in the clinic..

Away from the science Cancer Research UK organised a very lively question and answer session with cross party representation of Welsh Assembly members chaired by the BBC's Health Correspondent Hywel Griffiths. This session covered a range of topics from the need for a cancer plan in Wales and the roll out of the bowel screening programme to views on co-payments for cancer treatment.

An Oxford Union style debate on "All effective treatment should be free" saw the case for being argued for the motion by Prof Richard Sullivan of the London School of Economics and Political Science and Prof Gordan McVie, Managing Editor of ecancermedicalscience, Cancer Intelligence, Bristol. The case against was argued by Dr Fergus McBeth, Director of the National Collaborating Centre for Cancer and Sir Michael Rawlins, Chairman of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The vote from the chamber was for the motion but Sir Rawlins went on to give a plenary lecture on "NICE and its role in cancer care" highlighting to the audience that providing the correct individualised treatment for patients is what would also be the most cost-effective and this should be the drive of research.

Professor Lesley Fallowfield from the Sussex Psychosocial Oncology Group at University of Sussex spoke on "Communicating effectively with patients" and she will be working with the Wales Cancer Trials Network across Wales to help integrate the "teams talking trials" programme into multidisciplinary teams. Prof Jane Maher the National Clinical Lead NHS Improvement and Chief Medical Officer from MacMillan Cancer Support talked about "Life after cancer treatment: a spectrum of chronic survivorship conditions" on issues of survivorship and living with cancer. This picked up from Prof Jessica Corner's talk highlighting the problems of long terms toxicities of cancer therapy.

In addition to the plenary lectures, sessions were held on many research aspects including basic science, from bench to bedside, on new therapies for cancer and their evaluation in clinical trials, a translational science focus, a clinical trials symposium, cancer immunology, palliative care and also cancer and the primary care setting.

The conference attracted a huge breadth of topics in cancer from people's perception of cancer to targeting cancer tumours; from stem cells to evaluating the HPV vaccine to discussions on do we need a cancer plan for Wales? The breadth of delegates gave a real sense of everyone pulling together.

The conference highlighted the issues of payment for cancer treatment, the need for an updated cancer policy in Wales and that research should be driven by the focus on predictive genetic markers and trial programmes incorporating molecular selection and individualisation of therapy.

The Wales Cancer Alliance and the Wales Cancer Institute would like to thank all speakers, chairs, poster judges and delegates and we look forward to welcoming you to the next conference in 2010.

More information at www.walescancerconference.org


The Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre
Members of the Wales Cancer Institute have successfully bid for the Wales Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) aiming to turn scientific discoveries into treatments as quickly as possible. Receiving £287,000 a year for the next five years the centre will focus on bringing new agents and molecular markers to clinical trials.

Professor Alan Burnett, Head of the Haematology Department at the School of Medicine Cardiff University led the bid. He has already conducted a number of successful projects which have translated laboratory research into clinical trials of leukaemia treatments.  Professor Burnett’s work has included the development of an agent which targets one of the most common gene mutations causing acute adult leukaemia. Pre-clinical work has shown it to work on human cells and a patient trial is now under way. The ECMC will take Professor Burnett’s development system and apply it to other forms of cancer.

Professor Burnett is collaborating with colleagues in Cardiff and across Wales to identify other areas which can be developed through the ECMC with potential candidates in prostate, breast and colo-rectal cancer.

Co-investigators on this project include colleagues from the Schools of Pharmacy and Bioscience at Cardiff University and from the South West Wales Cancer Institute and Velindre NHS Trust.



Collaborating in Cancer Research Conference 2006

The "Collaborating in Cancer Research Conference 2006" took place on 8th and 9th March at the Millennium Stadium and was deemed a great success. This was the inaugural conference of the Wales Cancer Institute, a central partnership of clinicians, scientists, charities and government bodies which aims to translate the quality research being conducted in the laboratories and clinical trials into new cancer drugs and treatments for patients more quickly and more effectively.

Up to 300 delegates from across the UK came together to listen to keynote speeches and discussions on subjects ranging from human cancer tissue donation to the very latest drugs being trialed for the frontline fight against the disease.

On day one Prof Julian Peto gave his keynote speech on "An epidemiological perspective on the biology of cancer" before colleagues from around Wales updated the audience on current work in both basic science and clinical cancer research. The day ended with a debate on the drug Herceptin with the audience voting on the motion that "This house believes that all new cancer drugs should be available for patients on the NHS as soon as they are licensed". Following on from her sit-in at the new Welsh Assembly Government building Mrs Jayne Sullivan put the patient perspective across. Prof Robert Leonard from Swansea gave the clinicians perspective and Dr Geoffrey Carroll from the Health Commission Wales gave the commissioners perspective.

Day two began with a series of talks on Tissue Banking including Dr Nick Zeps, Director of the Western Australia Research Tissue Network talking on "Tissue Banking - why bother".

This was followed by individual sessions on Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Palliative Care, Informed Consent, Haematology, Colorectal Cancer and Screening, Prevention and Primary Care.

Sara Edwards of BBC's Wales Today chaired a lively question and answer session "Cancer Research under the Microscope" where patients attending the conference could put their questions on cancer research to a panel of a clinician, scientist and research nurse.

The conference ended with a keynote speech from Dr Richard Sullivan of Cancer Research UK who talked about CRUK's vision for cancer research in the UK.

Prof David Wynford Thomas, Dean of Medicine at Cardiff University and lead for the Wales Cancer Institute said "The conference lived up to our expectations and provided a fantastic spring board for the future work of the institute across Wales"

Please find below some of the presentations from the plenary sessions at the conference. Presentations from the break-out sessions to follow. Please click on the links to download and view the presentations.

'An epidemiological perspective on the biology of cancer.'
Professor Julian Peto, Cancer Research UK Chair of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Institute of Cancer Research.

'Basic research and understanding cancer proneness: the role of DNA repair'
Prof Ray Waters - Cardiff University, Pathology Dept

'Age, Cancer and the repair of broken chromosomes'
Dr Thomas Caspari, North West Cancer Research Fund Institute, University of Bangor

'Treatment of Advanced colorectal cancer: bedside and bench'
Prof Tim Maughan, Velindre Hospital

'Drug Development'
Prof Jim Cassidy, CRUK Dept Medical Oncology, University of Glasgow

'The Issue of Tissue' - Cancer Banking for Research'
Dr Gerry Thomas, Swansea University

'Bioinformatics - plus and minuses'
Dr Paul Lewis, Swansea University

'Tissue banking - why bother!?!'
Dr Nik Zeps, Director, Western Australian Research Tissue Network

'Current trials in prostate cancer'
Prof Malcolm Mason, CRW Professor of Clinical Oncology