A RESEARCH team based at Royal Cornwall Hospital has recruited the first patients in the UK to take part in two international breast cancer studies.
Staff at the Sunrise Centre at the hospital site at Treliske, Truro, have enrolled the patients in the Unirad international study sponsored by the French non-profit organisation Unicancer. The study will trial the drug Everolimus in women with hormone receptor positive primary breast cancer being treated with hormone therapy.
The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust (RCHT) oncology research team has also enrolled the first UK patient into the Aurora study, which aims to improve the understanding of breast cancer which has reappeared or spread to another part of the body, to improve treatment.
Both studies are funded by the National Institute of Health Research, the research arm of the NHS.
RCHT is the only site in the South West Clinical Research Network area conducting the Aurora study, which will collect clinical data and test biological samples from breast cancer patients across a number of sites in Europe.
Duncan Wheatley, principal investigator at RCHT for the Unirad study, said: “We are committed to improving the outcome of patients volunteering to be entered into clinical studies, we are making enormous progress.
“Patients who have cancer in this area are receiving the very best, most up-to-date treatment it is possible to have in the Royal Cornwall Hospital. The fact that we regularly enter the first patients into a study shows that the whole system is very well set up here.
“We thank all the patients who volunteer to enter clinical studies.”