A pioneering cancer programme could revolutionise the way patients are treated by tailoring their needs.

The project, funded by Cancer Research UK and the Department of Health, involves the study of new drugs which target patients suffering from  advanced states of the disease, who are not responding to standard treatments.

Researchers at Glasgow's Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre are at the forefront of the project, which aims to create a network of 19 Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMC) across the UK, including Edinburgh.

The centres give cancer patients the chance to participate in early trials for the latest and innovative anti-cancer treatments in development.

At the Glasgow ECMC clinicians and scientists test and develop new drugs more quickly than before by depending on the willingness of patients to trial unlicensed treatments.

Professor Jim Cassidy, head of the Glasgow ECMC, said: "It's unfair to say that any of these are wonder drugs. All of these are experiments, and that's how we put it to patients, that they are taking part in experiments of new agents and the hope very clearly is that these agents become standard therapies."

One of their patients, Gary Nellies from Falkirk, is taking part in his third clinical trial at the centre.

He was diagnosed with bowel cancer five years ago and now the disease has spread to his lungs.

Mr Nellies now hopes to find a drug treatment that will benefit him directly.

He said: "I want to try something that might work for me and my theory is that if you get ordinary chemotherapy drugs they know what that does so  it might be productive to you but if I'm on  a trial we don't yet know what those drugs are so is that the one that's going to be beneficial to me? That's what I have in my mind."
 
Clinicians in Glasgow hope the millions of pounds of funding should speed up the transition of anti-cancer drugs from the laboratory benches at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research to patient's bedsides.

The discoveries made in the labs will be developed into new drugs to be sent down to be trialled by seriously ill patients. Their feedback is then sent back for analysis, and eventually create personalised tailored treatments for every cancer patient.

Last year Cancer Research UK invested more than £18million in research in Glasgow. Much of this funding goes towards the work of the doctors and scientists at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre and the nearby Beatson Institute for Cancer Research.

Prof Cassidy said: "These are exciting times in cancer research. Thanks to a much better understanding of how cancer develops, scientists here can design and develop more targeted therapies which are more effective and have fewer unpleasant side effects in patients.”

He added: "Better knowledge of the science of the disease means we can control cancer more effectively enabling patients to live longer.

"Advances are steadily being made here in the detection and treatment of cancer which will help save even more lives."

Today around eight out of ten women with breast cancer survive for at least five years. In the 1970s the figure was five out of ten.

Survival rates for ovarian cancer have doubled since the 1970s and five-year survival rates for bowel cancer have doubled in the same period.

Around seven in ten newly-diagnosed prostate cancer patients now survive beyond five years whereas in the 1970s it was only three in ten.

Chloe Cowan, senior Cancer Research UK nurse at the Glasgow ECMC said: "The ECMC aims to translate basic science discoveries into treatments for cancer patients as quickly as possible by taking medical advances from the laboratory bench to the bedside.

"The ECMC in Glasgow provides essential infrastructure and support so we can run more clinical trials and this will mean cancer patients in Scotland will access new treatments as quickly as possible."