HSC R&D Division partners with Cancer Research UK in co-funding the Northern Ireland Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (NIECMC).
The NIECMC brings together teams from within the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology (CCRCB) at Queen's University Belfast and the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust with a focus on facilitating effective translational research in experimental cancer medicine.
The ECMC in Belfast is one of 18 individual centres which form a network of Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres across the UK. The goal of the ECMC Network is to drive the development of new anti-cancer treatments and therapies to bring benefits to patients faster.
The Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre website explains what the centres are trying to achieve.
Experimental medicine, also known as translational research, is a hot topic in the world of cancer science. It can be defined as "the investigation undertaken in human beings to identify mechanisms of disease and to test the validity and importance of new discoveries or treatments."
Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMC) brings together experts in cancer biology (lab scientists) with clinical researchers (cancer doctors) to speed up the flow of ideas from the lab bench to the patient's bedside. In this way, scientists can work with the clinic, to identify the needs of doctors and their patients, and come up with new ways to tackle cancer. And doctors have access to the very latest new drugs to test in clinical trials, finding out if potential treatments are safe and effective.
