Research Projects

Students Fight Cancer supports six specific research projects. As we would like to tell our supporters what we do with the donated money and why it is so badly needed, below you can find the eight researches briefly explained.

The early detection of kidney cancer by using an urine test

Kidney Cancer is often discovered by coincidence and most of the time it is hard to say if the tumour is malignant or benignant. The consequence is that people with a benignant tumour sometimes have to undergo heavy surgeries. The solutions for this problem may be in biomarkers: chemicals which provide a measurable indicator for the prevalent state of the disease. Researcher at the Maastricht UMC+ want to discover biomarkers in urine, that point to kidney cancer and the benignancy/malignancy of the tumour. The research team in Maastricht developed a unique and new method to make this diagnosis, which hasn’t yet been used elsewhere in the world. A lot of research is needed before this new method can be applied within hospitals. The support from Students Fight Cancer is much needed to reach this goal.

A scan instead of an operation for breast cancer

After a breast cancer diagnosis, it’s very important to know if there are any metastases. To be able to say this, the axillary gland needs to be removed. This is what we call the axillary lymph node dissection. Many women have long-term complaints after this operation, while 8 out of 10 women have clean lymph nodes. A group of researchers in Maastricht are now looking for a way to replace the lymph node dissection by a PET-MRI scan. Luckily this seems to be the case. The next step is to demonstrate that it works in a larger group of people. A PET-MRI scan of the lymph nodes is made in a group of 125 breast cancer patients. If this study gives the same results like the first, smaller one, this new method will be used immediately in the hospital. A study like this costs a lot money, and that’s one of the studies where the total revenue of Students Fight Cancer goes to.

Breast reconstruction with feeling

Having a breast amputated is often a drastic experience for women. Nowadays there are very good cosmetic results can be achieved with breast reconstructions. However, the feeling in the breast is missing with the traditional procedure, which is extra part of suffering for many women. Doctors at Maastricht UMC + have developed a way to preserve feeling in the reconstructed breast. The technique has been used in Maastricht UMC + for a few years now and the first results are promising. Women with a nerve connection seem to have more sensation in their breasts than women without. They also seem to rate their quality of life higher. But before you can call it a fact, it has to be scientifically proven. That is why a large-scale study has been started. In addition, the team is working on further improving the procedure. Can you help make it possible? Support Students Fight Cancer.

Active life after colon cancer

More and more patients are able to survive colon cancer due to the improvements made in treatment. Unfortunately they often still have physical complaints and are chronically fatigued after treatment. These complaints can have a significant impact on the patients life. Scientists in Maastricht are trying to find solutions for these complaints by studying different types of nutrition and physical activity and their effect on these complaints. The population for this study consists of patients who have been treated for colon cancer in one of three selected hospitals in Limburg. These patients are followed narrowly for 5 years after their treatment with activity meters and food journals used as tools by the scientists. Specialised dietitians visit these patients on a regular basis to take their blood levels and provide them with additional advice and nutrition plans. With this information the scientists are studying which type of lifestyle is most effective to cure the complaints of the ex-patients. The scientists need a bigger population for their research to be able to study which biological factors are important in this treatment. To make this valuable research possible your help is much needed!

Killercell: the soldier who cleans up cancer cells

You can think of them as little soldiers in your body taking out the ‘bad guys’. The ‘bad guys’ are the cancer cells. Killer cells are an important part of our immune system that prevents us from getting sick. But sometimes cancer cells manage to bypass these killer cells. Researchers in Maastricht are therefore making extra strong killer cells in the laboratory. The goal is to give them in the future to patients whose own killer cells are not working properly anymore. First, the treatment of bone marrow and breast cancer can be improved, but later on treatments of other cancers could also be improved. Immunotherapy is promising, but also very expensive. So join the fight and make a difference by supporting Students Fight Cancer.

Emaciation Process in Pancreatic and Ovarian Cancer

Pancreatic and ovarian cancers are often detected at an advanced stage. Most patients lose very much weight (called cachexia called cachexia) and lose a lot of muscle mass. Through cultured mini-tumors from patients with and without cachexia, we are unraveling the origins of cachexia and testing different forms of chemotherapy to see how cachexia affects chemotherapy to arrive at more targeted treatments and possibly develop new ones.