Articles
What can we expect from mRNA cancer vaccines?
Messenger RNA vaccines turned around Europe’s fight against the Covid pandemic. Less than a year after the first lockdowns were declared, mRNA vaccines got regulatory approval for emergency use, first…
Sri Lanka cancer care hit by foreign currency crisis
A shortage of essential cancer drugs caused by financial crisis is threatening to dampen Sri Lanka’s success in treating cancer as part of a free health service. The country is…
From social determinants to cancer outcomes: the cell biology behind the disparities
Raised levels of stress are a normal response to being diagnosed with cancer, and asking patients about their psychological and emotional wellbeing is, or should be, a normal part of…
A success story in Romania’s struggle to control cervical cancer
In rural Romania, in a small town called Sadova, some 200 km west of the country’s capital Bucharest, the local community is trying to ensure that their daughters don’t have…
Developing palliative care: new WHO guidance helps countries tailor their own path
Image: Delivering palliative care in Kerala, India ©Camilla Perkins, camillaperkins.com Delivering palliative care to avoid unnecessary health-related suffering is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “a moral imperative…
Global elimination: securing a future free from cervical cancer
August 7th 2020, much of the world was in various states of lockdown, anxiously awaiting news about progress in development of vaccines against the new SARS-Cov-2 virus, which by then…
Do patents encourage or discourage innovation? Intellectual property from ancient Greece to the Covid pandemic
In October 2020, India and South Africa submitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) a proposal for a waiver from certain provisions of the Trips agreement – the 1994 WTO…
Molecular diagnostics and NGS in the clinic: where are we and where do we need to go?
The development of next generation sequencing (NGS) has been a game changer for our understanding of genetics, and in turn for many aspects of biomedicine. This includes cancer, where it…
The invisible cure. Should we be talking more about cancer surgery?
The best chance of being cured of cancer is through surgery by expert surgeons with a deep knowledge of oncology. Why then are the public, patients and policy makers so…
Precision care: supporting our patients starts with asking them what they want and need
Two weeks after receiving a brain tumour diagnosis, Martin was copied into an email from one of his healthcare team telling his GP that Martin was “understandably devastated by his…