Dr Francesco Boccellato, Leadership Fellow at the Oxford Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research has recently been awarded the Lee Placito Research Fellowship in Gastrointestinal Cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers Helicobacter pylori a class 1 carcinogen and stomach cancer causes more than 700,000 deaths per year worldwide. However, not every stomach cancer is associated with H. pylori and the role of other risk factors remains as yet unknown. It has been suggested that reflux disease is also associated with stomach cancer. Reflux is a condition where gut juices move upwards, generating pain and inflammation. Epidemiologists have seen that patients with some reflux conditions appear to have a higher chance of developing conditions within the stomach that relate to cancer.
Francesco will use the Lee Placito Fellowship to further investigate the effect of reflux on the epithelium of the stomach, using an innovative 3D culture of the stomach layers called the ‘mucosoids’.
On receiving the Fellowship, Dr Boccellato commented: ‘Using the Lee Placito Fellowship, I will use the mucosoids cultures we have previously designed to investigate the how reflux might play a role in the mechanisms underlying gastrointestinal immunity and carcinogenesis.’