Park Royal archive probes early bowel cancer

Thousands of tumour samples stored in the basement of St Mark’s National Bowel Hospital in Park Royal could help explain why bowel cancer is increasingly being diagnosed in people under 50.

At the LNWH hospital, based at Central Middlesex Hospital in Park Royal, doctors and researchers are beginning a detailed study of bowel cancer specimens dating back nearly a century. Some samples, preserved in wax since the 1930s, are accompanied by surgeons’ handwritten notes and hand-drawn sketches.

Scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and St Mark’s Hospital will compare bowel cancer samples from the 1960s with those taken from patients today, looking for clues about how changes in diet, lifestyle and the environment may be driving the rise in early-onset disease.

Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and the second biggest cause of cancer deaths. While screening has reduced cases among older adults, diagnoses in younger people have risen sharply and are expected to double between 2010 and 2030.

Professor Trevor Graham of the ICR said the project would examine how environmental exposures leave distinct “fingerprints” in cancer DNA.  He said: “People in the 1960s lived very differently to people today. By comparing cancers from different eras, we hope to identify what is driving the increase in bowel cancer in younger adults.”

Professor Kevin Monahan, co-lead for the project and gastroenterologist and co-director of The St Mark’s Centre for Familial Intestinal Cancer, commented: “We have a lot to learn about the causes of bowel cancer in young people, and why this has been increasing in recent decades. We don’t yet know whether it’s one factor or many ranging from diet and genetics to microplastics and sedentary lifestyles.

“What’s striking is that many younger patients show no obvious signs of poor health yet are being diagnosed with aggressive forms of bowel cancer. “We believe that our unique resource of historical tumour samples at St Mark’s Hospital will open a window to new approaches to prevention of bowel cancer in the young.”