Ian Hitchcock’s first encounter with cancer was as a schoolboy in Bedford. He played rugby there and became good friends with a teammate.
“He was a lovely guy. Smart, pleasant and a talented sports person. He was really one of the most popular kids in the year,” said Hitchcock, who recently oversaw the creation of York University’s new center for blood research.
Then one summer, Hitchcock – now a professor of experimental hematology at York – heard that his friend had been diagnosed with cancer. “It was a time before social media so it was just a rumor – that he got a lump and had to have it removed. He couldn’t have been much more than 16 years old.”
Later that year, he learned that the treatment had failed and that his friend had died. “I was shocked just like the whole school. He was young and fit and healthy like me and I kept thinking: what’s going on here?”
Hitchcock took the news personally and the fight against cancer became a special mission for him, as he turned his studies in biology into a crusade. “It was driven by what happened. Indeed, I am still driven by his death,” he said.
The result of these efforts is the Center for Blood Research in York, which opened earlier this year. “Our main mission is simple: We are ready to fight blood cancers – leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and other related conditions,” Hitchcock said.
Blood cancers, like solid tumours, remain a major health problem in the UK. In an aging population, people become increasingly vulnerable to cancers that become more common as individuals age. Better diagnosis also means more cases are reported.
“There progress was, no doubt, but blood cancers, as a class, are the fifth most common form of cancer in this country. More importantly, it is one of the most common cancers in children.”
Risk factors are also uncommon, he added. “If you look at most solid tumors, there are agents like cigarette smoking and diet that increase someone’s chances of succumbing. But there aren’t really any lifestyle factors that increase the chances of developing blood cancer, with the only definite risk factors being age and, for reasons currently unclear, being male. It really stands out.
“If we can find out the reason why men are more susceptible, it will open up the possibility of developing new diagnoses and treatments for blood cancer.”
to newsletter promotion
And this will be a key approach for the new center which combines three areas of expertise: clinicians treating blood cancers; epidemiologists who study variations in cancer incidence; and experimental hematologists who understand the molecular changes in blood cells. The combination of these approaches should shed new light on many blood cancers, Hitchcock said.
“We will study exactly why treatments for some blood cancers are now so successful – with the specific aim of using those lessons to create new medicines and therapies for other, more recalcitrant conditions.”
An example is provided by acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children. “Survival rates in children and young adults are now fantastic – about 97%,” Hitchcock said. “However, those survival rates decrease as patients get older, even though we are dealing with the same disease. And this is another puzzle for medicine. How can we make therapies more effective and friendlier for older patients? This will be another main target for research at our centre. There is definitely still a lot for us to do in the coming years.”
