Chandler’s Ford researcher supports cancer campaign for investment
Anna Song, who helps to find the best new ways to detect and treat cancer at the Cancer Research UK funded Southampton Clinical Trials Unit (SCTU), is backing the charity’s appeal calling for urgent support.
With cancer cases on the rise in the south east, the senior trial manager and pregnant mum-of-two from Chandler’s Ford, is supporting the launch of Cancer Research UK’s More Research, Less Cancer campaign, which aims to raise £400m to help accelerate progress in the fight against the disease.
Anna said: “When I was working with children on the paediatric oncology ward at University Hospital Southampton, it really pulled at your heart strings. Part of my role in checking and dispensing treatments was looking ahead to what future options there were available for these patients but sadly, there is a limit to what you can give them.
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“It was then that I decided to work in research and focused on oncology because no matter what cancer people are facing, or who they are, we must have options.”
Anna was just a child when her mum, Janet, 62, was first diagnosed with breast cancer.
She said: “I watched her lose her hair and go through invasive surgery – a double mastectomy to reduce the risk of her cancer returning and it was a time that I grew up earlier than I perhaps would have done otherwise.
“Ten years later, when I was then working in clinical trials, she was re-diagnosed, this time with stage four breast cancer. My world fell apart and I booked a one-way ticket to America where she now lives, to be with her, not knowing when I would return.
“Thanks to the progress we have seen in treatment options and the access that she has to drugs in America, she is living well with her cancer and is regularly monitored, but it feels like a continual, ticking time-bomb.”
Joining the call for urgent investment in research is Southampton Clinical Trials Unit director, Professor Gareth Griffiths, from Romsey.
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He and his fellow scientists have penned a letter to recruit those with “the means and vision to bring about a better world” to help tackle the disease.
Prof Griffiths said: “Ideas that were once science fiction, are becoming science fact. Now, we’re standing on the brink of discoveries like new blood tests that could detect cancer at an earlier stage, and algorithms that could predict someone’s cancer risk and stop it from developing in the first place. Discoveries that ultimately have the power to give millions in the South – and across the world – more time with their loved ones. That’s why I’m calling for more support and urging philanthropists to join the army of fundraisers and donors that power the charity’s life-saving research every day.
“Beating cancer will take scientists, researchers, clinicians and entrepreneurs joining forces across disciplines and continents. Together, we can go further and faster in the fight against the disease.”
Visit cruk.org/more-research to find out more.
