Thanks to your generous donations, we’ve provided £16,500 to fund an exciting new research project at Leeds Cancer Centre.

The project, led by Dr Tze Wah, Consultant Diagnostic and Interventional Radiologist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and Dr Adel Samson, Clinician Scientist and Honorary Medical Oncologist at the University of Leeds, hopes to improve survival rates for liver cancer patients.

Leeds Cancer Centre sees around 200 liver cancer patients a year and, sadly, just 11% of patients whose cancer hasn’t spread are still alive after five years.

Dr Wah and Dr Samson, both experts in their field, are working together to take extra blood samples from patients before and after a tumour-ablation procedure. The blood samples will be examined to determine how the immune system responds to tumour ablation.

Dr Adel Samson told us, “The aim of this project is to design combination treatments for patients with liver cancer, we hope that by combining a tumour-killing procedure with immunotherapy that we can increase the likelihood of a cure.”

Tumour ablation is a treatment method that uses heat or freezing methods to kill tumour cells. Often, flu like symptoms are triggered in cancer patients undergoing tumour-killing procedures and this project aims to see how the immune system is involved.

Dr Tze Wah said, “We’re really excited that Leeds Hospitals Charity has funded this project, it’s the first stepping stone on our journey to developing new clinical trials for liver cancer patients.”

The project will begin in early 2021 with a small cohort of liver patients and Drs Samson and Wah hope to secure future charitable support to help Leeds Cancer Centre fund world-leading research.