Cancer medicines from concept to clinic – that is the mantra of researchers at Bradford University’s £10 million Institute of Cancer Therapeutics.

The success of their ‘smart bomb’ tumour-blasting therapy, which is scheduled to begin clinical trials at a local hospital this year, shows they can do it.

But with the help of Telegraph & Argus readers, there could be even more ground-breaking discoveries to come from our city.

Yesterday we announced the Telegraph & Argus Bradford Crocus Appeal to raise £1 million towards making the pioneering research that already happens in Bradford at least ten times faster.

We have joined forces with the University, charity Yorkshire Cancer Research and principal supporter the Sovereign Health Care Charitable Trust, to buy the centre a new proteomic mass spectrometer.

Professor Laurence Patterson, who joined the institute as director when it opened in 2005, said the cutting edge machine will allow its researchers to study tens of thousands of proteins, which play a key role in cancer, at the same time.

This is about ten times more than it can at the moment and could hold the key to making its next big discovery even faster.

The department already has a proteomic mass spectrometer, and when it was bought it was state-of-the-art. But it is now five years old and much slower than the new up-to-date model.

“The technology is now getting faster and faster,” said Prof Laurence, sitting in the state-of-the art research facility, partly funded through the T&A’s Bradford Can... cancer appeal in 2001.

He said: “We have a very powerful machine for looking at these proteins, but it’s five years old now.

“You only have to think about how smartphone technology has developed over the last five years to know how quickly technology changes.

“The machine we want to buy is so powerful that you can detect tens of thousands of proteins in cancer cells simultaneously.

“It means you can study tens of thousands of proteins rather than just thousands “In the old days you’d have to do it one at a time, which would take months, if not years.”

Scientists at the institute have dedicated considerable research into the vital role that certain proteins play in the spread of cancerous cells and the development of drugs that will prevent the action of specific proteins required for cancer to progress.

Each type of cell in the human body produces at least 10,000 different proteins and the key to developing new treatments could lie in understanding which proteins have changed between normal, healthy cells and those that have been cancerous.

By identifying the proteins that have changed, scientists can find new targets for drug development and new ways of detecting specific types of cancer.

To find these important proteins, researchers use an approach called proteomics – and a major technique in this field is mass spectrometry.

Mass spectrometry for protein and peptide analysis won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2002 for its inventors because it was such a leap forward in the ability to study biological problems such as cancer.

Prof Patterson said: “It is highly sophisticated technology that can detect these proteins in cells.

“It can give us a massive advantage over our competitors because you are only as good as your machine.”

The ICT’s ‘smart bomb’ discovery, announced at the British Science Festival in Bradford in 2011, has provided a springboard for the T&A Bradford Crocus Appeal and says much for the potential of further developments in the treatment of cancer.

The new chemical entity, designed to find and destroy all forms of solid tumour while leaving healthy tissue unharmed, could improve the life expectancy of cancer patients because it causes a significant delay in tumour growth and could be a potential cure when used in combination therapy.

It would mean patients need treatment less regularly, causing less disruption for people suffering the trauma of cancer.

“The success of that in terms of the publicity around the world showed that Bradford is focused on the discovery of new ways to treat cancer.” said Prof Patterson.

“We want to get the people of Bradford behind this and to be proud of the fact there’s this cancer research going on in Bradford.

“For us it’s not just about unpicking the cancer process, but the here and now – delivering new treatments.

“We’re about realising that cancer is a problem and thinking about how can we deal with it.”

Find out more about the T&A Crocus Cancer Appeal