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No-deal Brexit would stall the NHS medical revolution | Jeremy Farrar

Wellcome’s director offers a stark warning about the trust’s future in the UK

Every year, about 100 babies in the UK are diagnosed with rare, soft-tissue cancers. Treating young babies with chemotherapy and surgery is difficult and dangerous, but a new way of understanding these tumours using genomics offers hope. Researcher Sam Behjati devotes his work to decoding the DNA of rare childhood cancers. Recently, Behjati and his co-researchers revealed the genetic changes that cause a group of tumours to grow on babies’ kidneys. Now better targeted treatment using existing medicines is a possibility.

This week, the NHS becomes the first in the world to offer patients routine access to cutting-edge genomic medicine. This huge advance is in no small part because science in the UK has been at the forefront of the genomic revolution.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2zGDpSf

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