ANDEVILLE, Manchester — The Manchester-based Northern Caribbean University (NCU) recently received a boost in its cancer research following a donation of $1.5 million by the Carnegie Foundation.
Director of NCU’s cancer research unit Dr Kacey Reid said NCU is working towards being well equipped to advance cancer research to another level.
“We believe that here on this campus is the expertise, the knowledge and most of all, the will to move our research to the next level. We believe that it is time to really uncover, develop and standardise the anti-tumour… and the anti-inflammatory potentials of our plants,” he said at the Carnegie Foundation annual lecture series at NCU last Thursday.
The university’s Professor Paul Gyles was credited for developing the commercial potential of sorrel which research has shown that it contains anti-cancer agents.
He pointed out that herbal medicine is vital to treating cancer.
“There is a widely held belief that natural alternative approaches offer less side effects and in some cases could be more effective,” he said.
He said Jamaica has a high mortality rate for prostate cancer.
“The worrying fact is that cancer continues to rise and specifically in poor countries like ourselves where access to the latest cancer treatment is often difficult… The top three cancers in Jamaica are prostate, breast and colon cancers, but perhaps even more worrying is that for a country our size the age standard for life mortality rate for prostate cancer puts us at number three in the world,” he said.
