Paresh Vyas is a Professor of Haematology at the University of Oxford who specialises in the treatment of patients with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and a related condition called Myelodysplasia. For the past 15 years, he’s been conducting clinical trials into these two disorders and the reason why he conducts clinical trials is to bring new treatments for blood cancer patients. Many of his colleagues throughout the UK are also conducting clinical trials into a variety of blood cancers, leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and related disorders and they’ve seen an explosion of new therapies in the last 5 to 10 years. Many of these therapies have transformed the outcome of patients and most of the initial work was done through clinical trials.

However, for many patients, the outcome is still not as good as we would want and not as good as the patients would want, so it’s important to continue making progress, and bringing new treatments through clinical trials. Often patients can access new treatments years before they become available on the NHS.

“It’s crucial that we continue our activity in clinical trials and it’s vital we expand the access that patients have for clinical trials as we don’t want that access to be restricted to just some regions. We don’t want a postcode lottery for trial access and more and more, it’s becoming clear that really powerful treatments are going to be available for patients through these clinical trials. Therefore, it’s crucially important that organisations like Cure Leukaemia continue to raise money to fund research nurses in major NHS hospitals throughout the United Kingdom so that patients can access these clinical trials. I think it’s one of the most important things that we can do for blood cancer patients throughout the United Kingdom”.