Project title: Using Maths to Cure Cancer with the International Agency for Research on
Cancer
Academic leader: Prof David Rand (Warwick Systems Biology Centre)
(d.a.rand@warwick.ac.uk)
External partner: IARC – International Agency for Research on Cancer.
External partner contact:
Background:
The role of Its role IARC is to conduct and coordinate research into the causes of cancer.
It is the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, with its main offices
in Lyon, France. A key objective is to promote international collaboration and a significant
feature of the IARC is its expertise in coordinating research across countries and
organizations. The Agency has a particular interest in conducting research in low and
middle-income countries through partnerships and collaborations with researchers in these
regions.
It places much emphasis on elucidating the role of environmental and lifestyle risk factors
and studying their interplay with genetic background in population-based studies and
appropriate experimental models. This emphasis reflects the understanding that most
cancers are, directly or indirectly, linked to environmental factors and thus are preventable.
The IARC Monographs Programme is a core element of the Agency’s portfolio of activities,
with international expert working groups evaluating the evidence of the carcinogenicity of
specific exposures. The Agency is also committed to studying approaches for the early
detection of cancer and in evaluating prevention strategies. IARC also coordinaties an
increasingly important biobank with currently more than 10 million well-characterized
samples for 1 million subjects from around the world. This resource permits the application
of innovative laboratory-based methodologies to study the causes, early detection and
prevention of cancer through collaborative studies with many international partners.
Education and training of cancer researchers worldwide is at the core of the Agency’s
mission.
Aim of the project:
The University of Warwick and the IARC are interested in developing partnerships and are
particularly interested in doing this in areas applying the mathematical sciences to cancer
research in all the relevant areas of IARC activity (including in population-based and
epidemiological studies, experimental models and biomedical laboratory research).
The aim of this project is to develop a prospectus of potential joint PhD projects with IARC.
The students involved would visit IARC for 3 or 4 days collecting information on the
possible joint projects including the broad range of projects that have been previously
identified. They group will be expected to follow this up with literature reviews etc and
information gathered from relevant Warwick staff to produce a reasonably detailed
prospectus showing scientific understanding and good judgement that could be used over
the future years of the CDT to inform students about possibilities. A deep and detailed
level of analysis would be expected from the group and a key aim would be to identify the
synergies between IARC and Warwick. A team of academics and clinicians from Warwick
interested in cancer will work with the students during the group project. The possibility of
other links (e.g. with CRUK, Birmingham Cancer Sciences and the Queen Elizabeth
Hospital) will also be considered.