TOGETHER WE ARE CURING CANCER

Donors to our Cancer Immunology Fund have helped Southampton’s Centre for Cancer Immunology to attract the brightest minds to join in the fight against cancer. By funding the Centre’s cutting edge research, specialist equipment, and the talent fund, our community of supporters has helped us create a vibrant research environment where the next big discoveries can be made.

A project co-led by one of the new researchers at the Centre, Tim Fenton, Associate Professor in Cancer Biology, is already reporting gamechanging findings in the area of cervical cancer.

The study is the largest ‘omics’ study of its kind, led by researchers at UCL and the University of Southampton. The team have discovered that cervical cancer can be divided into two distinct molecular subgroups – one far more aggressive than the other.

Cervical cancer is a major cause of cancer-related deaths in women and accounts for 528,000 new cases and 266,000 deaths worldwide each year. Even in the UK, where NHS cervical screening has dramatically reduced cancer incidence and with the national HPV vaccination programme aiming to cut rates even further, around 850 women die every year from the disease.

The word omics refers to a field of study in biological sciences that ends with -omics, such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, or metabolomics. The term implies a comprehensive, or global, assessment of a set of molecules.

In collaboration with scientists at UCL and the University of Kent, researchers from the Centre for Cancer Immunology carried out an integrated analysis of molecular and clinical data on 643 cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) cases, the most common form of cervical cancer.

The study found CSCC can be divided into two distinct subgroups – C1 and C2, with nearly a quarter of patients experiencing the more clinically aggressive disease (C2). C2 tumours displayed different genetic changes and had a lower number of killer T-cells, the white blood cells responsible for killing tumour cells.

The team also found that C2 tumours were common in patients who are also HIV-positive, underlining the link to a weaker anti-tumour immune response in this group.

Tim said: “Despite major steps forward in preventing cervical cancer, many women still die from the disease. Our findings suggest that determining whether a patient has a C1 or a C2 cervical cancer could help in planning their treatment, since it appears to provide additional prognostic information beyond that gained from clinical staging (examining the size and degree to which the tumour has spread beyond the cervix at the time of diagnosis).”