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CANCER CURE HOPE
Millions of Brits could be ‘cancer resistant’ and discovery could help find a cure
Just 2% of population having resistance would be a million people
MILLIONS of people may be “cancer-resistant”, according to experts.
Scientists are being offered up to £20million to work out why some are tumour-proof.
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About one in two Brits develop cancer and while chance and healthy living protect many of the other 50 per cent, some are thought to have a “natural resistance”.
Experts know this because tumours do not develop in everyone who would be expected to get one, for example due to gene faults or heavy smoking.
Professor Karen Vousden, of the Francis Crick Institute and member of Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee, told The Sun: “It is a very complicated area.
“We all know the story of someone’s grandad who smoked 60 a day but never got lung cancer.
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“Also some people don’t develop cancer even though they have genes that suggest they should.
“And we know that risk increases with age but then at some point that risk drops again as you get really old.
“We spend an awful lot of time thinking about why people do get cancer but we haven’t really thought about why some people don’t.
“I’d be hopeful we would see this in a large proportion of the population.”
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If even just two per cent of people show natural resistance it would be more than a million Brits.
The topic “cancer avoidance” is one of seven open to pitches for grants from the charity’s Cancer Grand Challenges pot.
Last year it funded research into a rise in young-onset bowel cancer, supported by £5m from Sun columnist Dame Deborah James’ Bowelbabe fund.
Other subjects this year include rewiring cancer cells to self-destruct and the use of AI to tackle tumours.
Professor Charlie Swanton, chief doctor at CRUK, said: “We hope the new challenges will continue to transform our understanding of cancer.”
Prof Vousden said some people may be protected by their genetics, the environments they live in or their lifestyles.
She added: “There could be all sorts of reasons and it’s certainly not going to be an easy answer.
“We see that there are people who don’t develop cancer when we think they should have, but we don’t know how to tell in advance.
“The best result for this research would be to be able to identify reasons why people are resistant to cancer, in a way that could help the general population.
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“Perhaps they have a genetic make-up that could change screening, a lifestyle we could recommend to people or we could develop a new drug or therapy to use in people who are at higher risk.”
Teams of scientists are invited to pitch their research ideas and the winners will be decided in early 2026.
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