Conference to discuss cancer care advances

Cancer care and research will come under the spotlight at a two-day conference opening in Dublin today.

Renowned cancer experts will address delegates at Cancer 2007, where the latest developments and challenges to deliver 21st century medicine to cancer patients will be highlighted.

The showcase of national and international leaders will also critically review the latest developments in cancer biology, cancer prevention, cancer screening and cancer drug therapy.

“We have over 200 delegates attending our conference which I believe will prove to be the most interesting and exciting ever held in this country,” said conference organiser, Professor Mark Lawler of St James and Trinity College.

“We are lucky to have been able to attract cancer experts who are at the very cutting edge of cancer care, cancer research and the development of treatments, which will make a massive difference for cancer patients and indeed people threatened with cancer in the coming decades.”

Minister for Health Mary Harney will open the 5th International Cancer Conference in the Shelbourne Hotel, where medics from Ireland, England and America will discuss the killer disease.

The theme of this year’s conference is Merging Science and Medicine to Secure Positive Patient Care.

Topics to be discussed include cancer strategy, plotting the way forward; cancer drug discovery in the molecular age; cancer prevention, the time is now; molecular medicine and medicine; and cancer of the gastrointestinal tract.

“Significant advances are occurring in the physical delivery of radiation to tumours in patients coupled with improvements in imaging,” added Professor Kevin Prise, Head Cell and Molecular Biophysics, Gray Cancer Institute Middlesex, UK.

“Our understanding of the effects of radiation at the cell and tissue level are also changing due to technological advances which allow radiations to be more precisely delivered in experimental models and their effects quantified.

“New insights to cellular responses to radiation exposures may provide new targeting strategies for future therapies and also influence our understanding of radiation risk after low dose exposures.”