21 October 2020

Dr Adam Chambers is an Academic Clinical Lecturer in Colorectal Surgery. He has lent his support to Bristol Against Cancer after receiving charity funding for a research trial.

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I've been a colorectal training registrar for the past seven years.

I didn't know as a kid that I wanted to be a doctor. That came to me later. I was very lucky, I had family friend who was a GP and that's what gave me the initial experience, which then led me on to apply to medical school.

I am trying to learn and understand more about the diseases that I'm interested in, so that’s colorectal disease and colorectal cancer, and trying to work out how we can try and make patients’ lives better.

As part of my research while I was doing my PhD, there was a trial that was funded by Above & Beyond, and we're in the process now of analysing the samples. 

To know that your work has been funded by local people, to try and improve the lives of people with colorectal cancer in Bristol is amazing.

It’s a good partnership that will lead on to interesting research and hopefully, change how people are treated with colorectal cancer.

Sometimes you can be quite removed from where the funding has come from, but it’s very apparent with Above & Beyond that it’s come from Bristol, and we’re trying to funnel it back into Bristol’s people.

Because each cancer is very different, particularly the advanced cancers where they've had a chance to evolve individually, there's lots of different clones of tumours within the cancers. Trying to work out the best treatment for one particular cancer is a real challenge at the moment. Everybody gets a very standardised therapy, so trying to try to work out how we can personalise that therapy is the long-term goal.

The whole aim of that is to improve the efficiency of therapy or surgery, and reduce the risk and harm from it, stopping people having radiation or stopping people having surgery if they're not going to need it. If they can have a complete cure from radiotherapy, they don't need to have surgery.

I think there’s a sense of achievement from working within a team and working with Above & Beyond.

There’s the knowledge that money raised is going forward to projects that could change the lives of people that you know, friends or family, as well as people that you work with.

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Your donation to Bristol Against Cancer could fund vital research that could go on to save lives.