Can We Improve Liver Cancer Treatment?

Our digestive systems have been underfunded for decades. Digestive conditions have been misunderstood for too long, and this is true for digestive cancers too.

Guts UK Charity has awarded Dr Daniel Patten at the University of Birmingham £14,715.35.

He is exploring whether it’s possible to improve liver cancer treatment by reprogramming the cells of blood vessels within liver tumours.

Why did you choose liver cancer research?

Liver cancers are highly resistant to conventional cancer treatments, and are often diagnosed at a later stage when it’s harder for us to treat. It’s therefore important that we develop new treatments for liver cancer, or ways to enhance how effective existing treatments are.

What do we already know?

One of the most promising developments has been immunotherapies. These work by using the patient’s own immune system (the body’s defence against disease/infection), to recognise and kill cancers. Their success has been dramatic in other cancers, but in liver cancer, most patients have failed to respond.

What are we yet to discover?

We don’t understand why some cancers don’t respond well to immunotherapies. Evidence points to the network of cells in and around the cancer, which work to protect it. If we understood how these cells are programmed, we could identify approaches to break the protective network and boost the effectiveness of cancer treatment.

What does this project aim to discover?

This research funded by Guts UK charity is focusing on the cells lining blood vessels within liver tumours. We suspect these cells might contribute to cancer growth and spreading ‘through the blood’. If this is the case, we aim to explore how we might be able to block this process. We hope that this might yield a potential new treatment for liver cancer.

You make research like this possible!

Only around 15 in 100 people will survive for five years or more after diagnosis of liver cancer. Hannah’s dad, Tony, passed away in 2022.

“We’d supported Guts UK before Dad passed away, but when he was planning his funeral, he asked us to continue fundraising in his memory. We’ve raised over £2,000 in memory of Dad. I even ran the London Marathon and plan on running the Great North Run this year too!” – Hannah

New research could give people like Tony a fighting chance. Your donations make it possible. Help the UK get to grips with guts by donating to Guts UK today.