The Cork Cancer Research Centre was officially opened yesterday by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin. For many, cancer is the unspeakable C word. Its diagnosis brings trauma not only for the sufferers but for their families.
Yet, there are grounds for optimism because major progress has been made in thetreatment of the disease and research under way throughout the world will undoubtedly lead to further advances. The new Cork centre aims to be a part of this process.
The director of the centre is Prof Gerry O'Sullivan, professor of surgery at UCC and the Mercy Hospital in Cork. Its establishment represents a significant Irish initiative in the efforts to understand cancer, how it develops and how it might be tackled, he says.
Prof O'Sullivan's particular area of interest is secondary cancers and how they can be controlled and overcome. "Progress is being made every year, and we are pushing back the frontiers and gaining new insights," he says.
He sums up the three main aims of the centre: "We expect to make a significant contribution on a national and international basis; to make a meaningful contribution to the understanding of cancer so that we will find new applications, and most of all, we hope to develop treatments that will be effective."
Nowadays, because of the application of research and new medical techniques, people are surviving cancers that would have killed them before, such as breast and colon cancer, leukaemias and testicular cancer. "New chemotherapy procedures and drugs have helped us to be effective against situations that might have been hopeless three decades ago," he says.
Prof O'Sullivan is in no doubt that smoking is a major contributory factor in cancers. "We could reduce cancers of the lung, pancreas and bladder by more than 40 per cent if people stopped smoking. It's as simple as that." In the meantime, the research work must forge ahead and Prof O'Sullivan believes the Cork Cancer Research Centre can make an important contribution.
Its aim is to be multi-disciplinary, with state-of-the-art technology at its disposal in branches of the centre at UCC, as well as the three teaching hospitals in Cork: Cork University Hospital, the South Infirmary/Victoria and the Mercy Hospital.
There will be collaboration on a national and international basis, with information and research results being pooled, and the centre's work will be published in the international journals.
Although yesterday marked the official opening of the centre, it has been operating quietly at its Mercy Hospital base in Cork for some time. Its research results have already been published in the journals - an acknowledgement that the work has reached an international standard and represents a valid contribution to the ongoing fight against cancer.
The centre begins its formal existence having cost £5 million. It already has a team of 15 scientists, and will cost in the region of £2 million annually. Depending on the research programmes being carried out, the team will change from time to time.
Typically, the programmes will ask questions, the research teams - which will include graduate students through to senior scientific staff - will seek the answers. And the programmes will be geared to cancer sufferers, not simply being confined to laboratory research for its own sake.
The centre will seek to make the connection between the laboratory and the patient so that advances under the microscope will have an application on the hospital wards.
Grant aid has been made available by the EU; the Irish Cancer Society; the HEA; the pharmaceutical industry and voluntary fund-raising, as well as other sources.
In the pursuit of a cure for one of the world's major killer diseases, the Cork Cancer Research Centre, while collaborating at all levels within and outside Ireland, will also work closely with the nearby National Microelectronics Research Centre in Cork.
One of the purposes of the research carried out in the centre will be to enable vaccine programmes to be implemented at clinical level. Another will be to perform a feasibility study on kidney cancer at national level, leading to gene-modified vaccines.
The centre also plans to organise a major scientific research symposium towards the end of the year.
Statistical information suggests cancer will overtake cardiovascular diseases in the next century as the number one cause of disease in the developed countries. In Ire- land, the disease accounts for about one- third of deaths in those aged under 65. An average of 18,000 new cases of cancer are recorded annually in Ireland, where the mortality rate due to cancer is higher than in other EU countries.