00:00Hi, I'm Dominic Rothwell, I'm the Deputy Director of the CRUK National Biomarker Centre, which
00:10is the building that we're in now.
00:13I've worked in cancer research in Manchester for over 20 years.
00:18Since the last 15 years I've worked in the biomarker sort of field, I've always been
00:23inquisitive and been very interested in science and particularly in cancer research, and as
00:29in most people, as I've got older, then cancer has started to affect my life more and more.
00:33As you're aware, one in two people get affected with family, friends or colleagues.
00:37I personally have lost very close family members, unfortunately recently my last couple of years
00:43my mum, and so I do realise how impactful and how heartbreaking this disease can be,
00:49but I am very fortunate in the job that I do is that I can make that difference with
00:52cancer research funding, I can see that the benefits that we translate from the research
00:57that we do into patients, and we work closely with the Christie Hospital and we really do
01:02get to see those tangible differences.
01:08So when I'm talking about biomarkers, what we mostly work on here is signals that we
01:13find in blood of cancer patients, which are released from the cancer and we can use them
01:17to detect the presence or the response of the cancer in patients, and so we use lots
01:23of different technologies which allow us to pick up these signals which can be very, very
01:26low and so we have to use lots of cutting edge approaches, but we are improving these
01:32constantly and we're also starting to look in different sorts of fluids, so you can also
01:36look in saliva, in urine, in stool samples, and also we've even started to look in things
01:42like tears, all of which potentially contain these biomarkers which will give us insight
01:46into these cancer patients and potentially improve our treatment options and outcomes
01:51for the patients.
01:54We are very fortunate here, we do world leading research, but the kind of research we do is
01:59very expensive and all of it is funded purely by donations to CRUK and I'm very happy to
02:04support Race for Life, I've done it and I've got friends and family who have been involved
02:08over the years.
02:09It's a fantastic, fun way to help raise money for CRUK and the money that raised will support
02:14research that we do and really will make a difference to cancer patients in the future.
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