Public lecture: Bowel Cancer Prevention – is aspirin just the start?

Date and Time: 1st February 2023, 17:30 - 18:30
Location: Online

Booking: The event has passed

This public lecture was delivered by Professor Karen Brown, joint lead of the Leicester Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and Director of the Leicester Cancer Research Centre on Wednesday 1st February at 5:30pm.

In this talk, Professor Karen Brown provided an introduction to cancer as well as it’s causes and how we can reduce our risk of developing cancer. The talk discussed the use of therapies to prevent cancer and some of the challenges of working in this area. This includes Professor Brown’s innovative work to develop resveratrol, a constituent of red grapes, wine and peanuts, for the prevention of bowel cancer. You were taken through the team’s research journey and found out how their work has progressed from the laboratory to a large national trial across 60 sites aiming to investigate whether resveratrol, aspirin and the diabetes drug metformin can protect people from developing bowel polyps.

	Professor Karen Brown originally trained as a pharmacist and is currently Professor of Translational Cancer Research at the University of Leicester, where she leads the multidisciplinary Cancer Prevention Group. Her research is focussed on the discovery and preclinical development of agents for the prevention of cancer in populations at increased risk, optimising the translation of these therapies to the clinic and conducting early and late phase trials. She has an interest in personalising interventions, natural compounds and existing drugs that can be repurposed for cancer prevention, and the role of metabolic health in cancer development and how this interacts with preventive therapies to influence efficacy. Her research over the last 15 years includes establishing a world first platform prevention trial of resveratrol, aspirin and metformin in high-risk patients recruited through the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme. Karen is joint lead of the Leicester Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and Director of the Leicester Cancer Research Centre. She established and is co-Chair of the UK Therapeutic Cancer Prevention Network and represents this Network on the steering group of the Cancer Prevention Europe Consortium.

Professor Karen Brown originally trained as a pharmacist and is currently Professor of Translational Cancer Research at the University of Leicester, where she leads the multidisciplinary Cancer Prevention Group. Her research is focussed on the discovery and preclinical development of agents for the prevention of cancer in populations at increased risk, optimising the translation of these therapies to the clinic and conducting early and late phase trials. She has an interest in personalising interventions, natural compounds and existing drugs that can be repurposed for cancer prevention, and the role of metabolic health in cancer development and how this interacts with preventive therapies to influence efficacy. Her research over the last 15 years includes establishing a world first platform prevention trial of resveratrol, aspirin and metformin in high-risk patients recruited through the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme.

Karen is joint lead of the Leicester Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and Director of the Leicester Cancer Research Centre. She established and is co-Chair of the UK Therapeutic Cancer Prevention Network and represents this Network on the steering group of the Cancer Prevention Europe Consortium.

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