‘He found a lump’: how school tragedy drove UK scientist’s mission to fight blood cancers

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 nice guy. Smart, pleasant and a talented athlete. He really was one of the most popular kids of the year,” said Hitchcock, who recently oversaw the creation of the new college at York University. blood test center.

One summer, Hitchcock – now a professor of experimental hematology at York – learned that his friend had been diagnosed with cancer. “This was a time before social media, so it was just a rumor – that he had found a lump and it needed to be removed. He couldn't have been much older than sixteen.”

Later that year he learned that the treatment had failed and that his friend had died. “I was shocked, as was the whole school. He was young and fit and healthy like me and I kept thinking: what is going on here?”

Hitchcock took the news personally and the fight against cancer became a special mission for him, as he turned his biology studies into a crusade. “It was driven by what happened. In fact, 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 cancer, like solid tumours, remains a major health problem in Britain. In an aging population, people become increasingly vulnerable to cancers that become more common as people age. Better diagnosis also means more cases are reported.

“There has undoubtedly been progress, but blood cancer as a class is the fifth most common cancer in this country. More importantly, they are one of the most common cancers in children.”

Risk factors are also unusual, he added. “If you look at most solid tumors, there are agents like cigarette smoke and diet that increase the chance that someone will succumb. But there aren't really any lifestyle factors that increase the chance of developing blood cancer, with the only clear risk factor being old age and, for currently unclear reasons, masculinity. It really stands out.

“If we can figure out why men are more sensitive, it would open the possibility of developing new diagnoses and treatments for blood cancer.”

And this will be an important approach for the new center, which combines three areas of expertise: doctors who treat blood cancer; epidemiologists who study variations in cancer prevalence; and experimental hematologists who understand the molecular changes in blood cells. Combining these approaches should shed new light on many blood cancers, Hitchcock said.

“We will investigate exactly why treatments for some blood cancers are now so successful – with the specific goal of using those lessons to create new drugs and therapies for other, more refractory conditions.”

An example of this is acute lymphocytic leukemia in children. “The survival rates for children and young adults are now fantastic – about 97%,” Hitchcock said. “However, those chances of survival decrease as patients get older, even if we are dealing with the same disease. And that is another puzzle for medicine. How can we make therapies more effective and friendlier for older patients? That will be another important target for research in our center. There is certainly still a lot to do in the coming years.”