Hello Alera and thanks for posting,

I am so sorry to learn about your mum.  After 10 years of her doing okay it must have been especially hard for you all when the cancer came back and was so widespread.

The advertising campaigns are pitched at people who may not realise they have symptoms that could be due to cancer. Some people delay seeing their GP for ages because they don’t know anything serious might be the matter. The campaigns reflect the fact that in many types of cancer, initial treatment is usually more likely to succeed when a cancer is at an early stage. The earlier a cancer is found the less likely it is to have already spread through the body before being treated. But some cancers don’t have any obvious stand out symptoms when they are still small, so sadly when they are first picked up by then they are advanced. The campaign messages tend to be directed at the majority, but I can appreciate that they can sometimes miss the mark and be upsetting.

Unfortunately an early stage doesn’t guarantee that a cancer hasn’t spread and will never come back, but even so, because of the much lower risk of a recurrence with early stage disease, it is an idea worth perusing even though some people might not benefit. I am not sure where you got your 30% statistic from. It doesn’t sound quite right to me for these days because statistics look backwards and breast cancer treatments have advanced, but whatever the figure, it is true that after treatment some people will have a recurrence so more research is needed to prevent this.    

Researching new ways of diagnosing cancer as earlier as possible is one way of trying to prevent cancer from spreading. Another way is trying to find out more about the process of cancer spreading to be able to hinder it. Research is looking at more effective initial treatments so that any stray cells that do escape before surgery or radiotherapy don’t survive. And of course research is still trying to find more successful treatments when cancer has spread. I can’t tell you how long it will be before the entire process of cancer spreading is fully understood, or when there will be more effective treatments for people whose cancer has spread, but research is getting closer.  

We fund all sorts of research, a lot of which looks into the biology of cancers to try and understand how they behave including how they invade and spread. You can read about some examples of our research into breast cancer at this link   and about some facts and figures about our research funding here.

If you want to know more about the research we fund you can get in touch by email so your request can be passed on to our research information team. To do this you would need to follow this link to contact our Supporter Services team.

I hope this is of some use.

Take care,

Julia 

Hello Alera and thanks for posting,

I am so sorry to learn about your mum.  After 10 years of her doing okay it must have been especially hard for you all when the cancer came back and was so widespread.

The advertising campaigns are pitched at people who may not realise they have symptoms that could be due to cancer. Some people delay seeing their GP for ages because they don’t know anything serious might be the matter. The campaigns reflect the fact that in many types of cancer, initial treatment is usually more likely to succeed when a cancer is at an early stage. The earlier a cancer is found the less likely it is to have already spread through the body before being treated. But some cancers don’t have any obvious stand out symptoms when they are still small, so sadly when they are first picked up by then they are advanced. The campaign messages tend to be directed at the majority, but I can appreciate that they can sometimes miss the mark and be upsetting.

Unfortunately an early stage doesn’t guarantee that a cancer hasn’t spread and will never come back, but even so, because of the much lower risk of a recurrence with early stage disease, it is an idea worth perusing even though some people might not benefit. I am not sure where you got your 30% statistic from. It doesn’t sound quite right to me for these days because statistics look backwards and breast cancer treatments have advanced, but whatever the figure, it is true that after treatment some people will have a recurrence so more research is needed to prevent this.    

Researching new ways of diagnosing cancer as earlier as possible is one way of trying to prevent cancer from spreading. Another way is trying to find out more about the process of cancer spreading to be able to hinder it. Research is looking at more effective initial treatments so that any stray cells that do escape before surgery or radiotherapy don’t survive. And of course research is still trying to find more successful treatments when cancer has spread. I can’t tell you how long it will be before the entire process of cancer spreading is fully understood, or when there will be more effective treatments for people whose cancer has spread, but research is getting closer.  

We fund all sorts of research, a lot of which looks into the biology of cancers to try and understand how they behave including how they invade and spread. You can read about some examples of our research into breast cancer at this link   and about some facts and figures about our research funding here.

If you want to know more about the research we fund you can get in touch by email so your request can be passed on to our research information team. To do this you would need to follow this link to contact our Supporter Services team.

I hope this is of some use.

Take care,

Julia