Fighting Bowel Cancer.

Bowel cancer occurs when abnormal cells in the wall of the large bowel grow in an uncontrolled way. Over 16,000 people will get be diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2017, and that’s why Can Too invest in promising young researchers like Dr Susan Woods who’s tracking a new drug for bowel cancer.

Colorectal or bowel cancer is the third most common type of the disease in Australia after skin and prostate, costing health services over $1 billion annually. Despite public screening efforts, many people still present with advanced disease. “Sadly as yet there are no effective treatments for most of them,” Susan says.

Dr Woods now hopes to use her experience in world-renowned labs – such as the lab of Nobel laureate j. Michael Bishop at the University of California, San Francisco – in her current project as part of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Biology group headed by physician-scientist Dr Daniel Worthley. With Dr Woods' support from the Can Too Foundation, she aims to continue her efforts to discover whether colorectal cancer can be prevented by a new drug aimed at “support cells” in the intestinal lining, where tumours form.

“This makes it imperative for me that the research we do is cutting-edge, innovative and produces real outcomes for patients.”

— Dr Susan Woods, Bowel Cancer Researcher