A CANCER doctor has been awarded a grant of more than half a million pounds towards his work combating the disease.
Dr Prabhakar Rajan, from Cancer Research UK's Beatson Institute, part of the University of Glasgow, is one of four – and the first surgeon in the west of Scotland – to have received a Clinician Scientist Fellowship grant from the charity.
The grant will allow him to conduct his own research in his specialist field of prostate cancer.
Dr Rajan, 35, has been working for the last eight years on treatments for prostate cancer and when cells start to spread to other parts of the body and has been awarded £675,000 to set up his own independent research programme into the condition.
He said: "With this essential funding, I will be able to develop my own independent and novel research programme to study how cancer cells spread by changing the way they express their genes, thereby pursuing my passion to identify effective treatments for advanced prostate cancer."
As part of a £2.75million investment over four years, Clinician Scientist Fellowships are awarded to up-and- coming health professionals to support them in carrying out research into cancer, bridging the gap between the laboratory and the bedside and speeding up medical advances for patients.
Clinicians who receive the award are then encouraged to establish their own independent research groups.
Dr Iain Foulkes, the charity's director of strategy and research funding, said: "The quality of applications this year was very high.
"These Clinician Scientists are going to be crucial in taking our fundamental understanding about cancers and using it to help the people that they meet in the clinic."
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