Professors Roland Wolf and Elaine Rankin from the University of Dundee will address the Scottish Parliament's conference on cancer in Edinburgh tomorrow - Friday 19 April.
Scotland against cancer - making a reality of the cancer plan - will be hosted by the parliament's cross-party group to identify areas where inequalities exist in the provision of cancer care and to campaign for their improvement.
Professor Roland Wolf, Director of the Biomedical centre at the
University of Dundee will speak during the session on research and development when
he will attempt to persuade the Scottish Executive that cancer research in
the lab should be quickly transferred in treatment to the clinic. He will
push for a virtual cancer centre where the main centres of excellence in
Scotland work together towards common goals, new treatments for cancer
and more sophisticated provision of cancer care.
Prof Wolf: "We must realise the importance of lab research for the development of cancer care particularly because care will become much more sophisticated in the future. Current structures in hospitals will not be able to support these treatments unless there is interface with the discoveries made in the science labs. In Scotland, we have the potential to be world leaders but one is currently being frustrated be the need to support the laboratory/clinic interface."
Professor Elaine Rankin will outline some measures that could be taken
to improve the early diagnosis rate of cancers. She will recommend that the
Scottish Executive start a media campaign to inform the public of the
symptoms to look out. Professor Rankin will be emphasising that the
greatest strides in improving the success of treating cancer have been
made as a result of the increasing knowledge from clinical studies. She will
emphasise the importance of participation in clinical studies to
encourage more people to consider them as part of their treatment.
The University of Dundee experts will be joined by MSPs, leading clinicians, Dr Mac Armstrong, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland and Professor Gordon MCKie, Director General of Cancer Research UK. The conference will be held in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.