Decembeard… growing awareness of bowel cancer

Following on from Movember is Decembeard, a campaign run by Bowel Cancer UK to encourage people to grow or decorate their facial hair throughout December to support and raise awareness of bowel cancer. Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK. Almost 42,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year. Bowel cancer is very treatable but the earlier it is diagnosed, the easier it is to treat, so it is important to know the signs and symptoms.

Despite improvements in screening many patients are diagnosed with late-stage advanced disease where prognosis is poor. Here in the faculty we have some significant bowel and cancer research projects underway looking at how this can be improved.  We caught up with our very own Dr Nick Peake, Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences, to find out a bit more about his research in this area.  Nick has recently been awarded funding from Bowel & Cancer Research for a 3 year project.

“As a researcher with a background in inflammatory disease, I began to study bowel cancer due to the close link between development of cancer and inflammation. When I moved to SHU, I had begun to take an interest in processes that linked inflammation, bowel cancer, and changes to the tissue structure of the bowel, which we now believe helps to drive the progression of disease.

With funding from Bowel & Cancer Research and Animal-free Research UK, and collaborating with colleagues in Southampton, London, Durham, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, I have begun to unpick a network of communication between bowel cancer and the tissue around it.

I am currently running projects looking at stiffness of 3D bowel cancer tissue mimics and the role of fat tissue surrounding the bowel, and thanks to a recent award from Bowel & Cancer Research, I will soon recruit a PhD student to study the role of tiny particles called vesicles that contribute to bowel cancer spreading around the body”.

Nick’s project will soon be profiled on the Bowel & Cancer Research website so please keep visiting their site, or follow them on twitter @BowelCancerRSRC, for regular updates.

You can also find out more about how to get involved in the Decembeard campaign or about bowel cancer awareness at the following links:

• Bowel Cancer UK – Decembeard
• #Decembeard.
•  Bowel & Cancer Research