Ashley Research Fellowship – Mr Kian Chin
The Ashley Charitable Trust funded Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust for the support of research undertaken by Mr Kian Chin to study breast disease. Mr Chin was supervised by Professor Adrian Harris PhD FRCP and Mr Mike Greenall FRCS, Consultant Surgeon at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.
The Main Project (laboratory based)
The investigation into the role of Vascular Cellular Adhesion Molecule-1 and Endostatin in the regulatory pathways of Angiogenesis in Human Breast Cancer.
It is well known that the growth of many cancers including breast depend on their blood supply to deliver the nutrients. And tumour cells can only grow up to 1 mm3 in size beyond which they will starve to death (apoptosis) unless they recruit new blood vessels to keep up with their demand. There is now hard scientific evidence to indicate that cancer cells can operate in an autonomous fashion by inducing new blood supply and become self-sufficient.
Mr Chin’s laboratory work was concentrated on the above 2 molecules that are produced by breast cancer cells. VCAM-1 is known to be a marker for increased neo-vascularisation activity whereas Endostatin is the opposite. However there is little data to indicate their exact roles in the neo-vascularisation pathways and whether these 2 molecules can be used to predict the survival outcome of breast cancer patients.
The work was carried out at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratory, Institute of Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.