A CITY university researcher has been awarded £1.6million for his bid to find a cure to a devastating illness.
Glasgow University's Dr Kamil Kranc is working at the Paul O'Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre at the city's Gartnavel Hospital to improve treatments for patients with leukaemia.
His Senior Cancer Research Fellowship award is from charity Cancer Research UK for work focusing on preventing leukaemia from returning after treatment.
In 2009, 4500 people in the UK died from the illness, which accounts for a third of cancers in children.
Dr Kranc's cash is one of a series of grants to new investigators to help them become tomorrow's research leaders and part of an £11m investment.
Dr Kranc said: "This Fellowship will allow me to consolidate my research team, take our research to a different dimension and hopefully translate it to novel therapeutic approaches."
Researchers think leukaemia stem cells are responsible for fuelling the disease but most treatments fail to destroy these cells, so the disease returns.
The new research will look at how these cells avoid destruction with the aim of finding a more efficient way to target the disease, the UK's 12th most common cancer, with 21 people diagnosed each day.
Professor Margaret Frame ,chairwoman of the New Investigator Awards interview panel, she said: "I have no doubt these outstanding individuals will achieve great things in the future."
matty.sutton@ heraldandtimes.co.uk