Jack Birch Unit for Molecular Carcinogenesis (JBUMC)

From Yorkipedia

The Jack Birch Unit was opened in 1992, funded by the generosity of the late Jack Birch, OBE and York Against Cancer.

The present Director is Professor Jenny Southgate and the focus of the Research Unit is the investigation of human carcinomas, with special emphasis on bladder cancer, the 5th most common adult cancer.

Bladder cancers develop from the urothelium, the specialised lining of the bladder wall. Causes of bladder cancer include exposure to carcinogens excreted in the urine, which are derived from tobacco smoke and occupational or environmental carcinogens.

Professor Jenny Southgate took up the post of Director of the Jack Birch Unit in October 1999. This post is sponsored by York Against Cancer.

Jenny began her career at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in London, where she obtained a degree from the Institute of Biology, followed by a PhD from the University of Leeds. She moved to Leeds in 1990, where she headed a research group based in the ICRF Cancer Medicine Research Unit at St James's University Hospital, University of Leeds.

Her research interests encompass the cell/molecular biology of human epithelial tissues and their cancers, and have primarily focused on the urothelium of the urinary bladder. She is also developing strategies to restore bladder function following trauma or disease (including cancer) using tissue engineering and biomaterials.

Jenny is a Deputy Director of the White Rose Centre for Industrial Collaboration in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (BITE CIC), which is funded by Yorkshire Forward.

Research in the Jack Birch Unit concentrates on epithelial tissues, which give rise to more than 80% of all adult human cancers. Epithelial cancers are known as carcinomas and include the common cancers of the lung, breast, colon, bladder, liver and prostate. Cancer occurs as the consequence of a breakdown in the controls that regulate how cells behave within a tissue and hence, we believe it is critical to understand how these control processes work in normal tissues. For this reason, we have developed normal human epithelial cell culture systems to investigate factors that regulate the balance between cell growth (proliferation), death and differentiation during homeostasis and wound repair. This knowledge can then be applied to understand the genesis and progression of malignant disease.

In the Jack Birch Unit, most of our work has centred on bladder cancer as:

It is a common cancer, but relatively little studied. In the UK, bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer.

Risk factors for bladder cancer include industrial exposure and smoking.

We have developed reliable systems to study the normal human tissue counterpart of bladder cancer, urothelium, in the laboratory.