We are delighted to announce that thanks to your support of our Rare Gynae Cancer Fund, we have awarded Dr Rachel Pounds from the University of Birmingham a grant to run a project to try and predict the risk of developing vulval cancer. Our Comms Manager, Lydia, blogs about the new research.

Vulval cancer is one of the rarer gynaecological cancers, affecting around 1,350 women and people with gynae organs each year in the UK.

There are some noncancerous conditions of the vulva which increase the risk of cancer developing, one of them being lichen sclerosus. Lichen sclerosus is a condition where the skin is inflamed, it can happen anywhere but is most common on the vulva and around the anus. It only slightly increases the risk of cancer developing (less than 5%) and most people with lichen sclerosus won’t develop cancer. But the majority of women with vulval cancer do have lichen sclerosus and so far we don’t have the research to know why some people go on to develop cancer and some do not.

Dr Rachel Pound’s research will look into ways to predict which women with lichen sclerosus are likely to have vulval cancer develop, so that more can be done to monitor them, manage their lichen sclerosus and reduce their cancer risk.

Scientists think that vulval cancer that isn’t caused by HPV may develop because of alterations in the DNA. DNA is in every cell of the body, it’s like the hardware, with all of the information a cell needs on what to be and do to keep our body running. Sometimes alterations (or mutations) happen when new cells are created, which can stop a cell working as it should and sometimes lead to cancer developing.

When cells are damaged, they repair and by doing so create new cells at a higher rate than normal. It is thought that the persistent inflammation that happens with lichen sclerosus causes more alterations to occur as the cells turnover more frequently. Rachel wants to explore this process and see whether she can identify which alterations are linked to vulval cancer.

She plans to do this by looking at biopsies taken from women with lichen sclerosus and women with both lichen sclerosus and vulval cancer. She hopes that not only would discovering which genetic alterations increase the risk of vulval cancer help doctors monitor the women with a higher risk, but it would reduce the anxiety for those who aren’t, and save them from such regular check-ups.

The study was planned with a local group of women with vulval cancer and lichen sclerosus. They all agreed that there was a big unmet need in understanding the reasons why lichen sclerosus increases the risk of cancer.

There are not many researchers focused on vulval cancer, and there’s very little research happening in the field. Our hope is to bring the community of researchers in this area together, to turbo-charge our understanding of vulval cancer and work towards the breakthroughs we need.

It is with huge thanks to all of the supporters who donated to the Rare Gynae Cancer Fund that we have been able to support this project and we look forward to updating you on its progress.