John Chetwood, winner of the 2012 IGHI Student Challenges Competition tells us how he has put the £2000 prize money to good use.
Detecting a Silent Cancer
With the hepatologists at Imperial College London, I had been in rural Thailand investigating urinary biomarkers of ‘cholangiocarcinoma’ or simply put, cancer of the bile ducts. Though cholangiocarcinoma is thankfully rare in developed countries, it is showing worrying increases in incidence, and has shown little improvement in survival over the last 15 years. There is still little hope of cure unless detected early and nearly everyone who develops this cancer will die from it.