Imagine doing a jigsaw without knowing what the picture looks like.

That is what scientists at Bradford University’s £10 million Institute of Cancer Therapeutics (ICT) do every day.

They are carrying out research to study the role of proteins in cancer – research which could help them pioneer new, less toxic treatments which don’t ravage the bodies of those suffering from the disease.

To do that, they need the best equipment and that is what the Telegraph & Argus Bradford Crocus Cancer Appeal will buy.

We aim to raise £1 million to ensure the University gets a new mass spectrometer, which will mean scientists can carry out their work ten times faster than ever before.

Professor Laurence Patterson, director of the ICT, said the department was dedicated to understanding the cancer process by developing new treatments.

“The cancer medicines discovery process is multifunctional and requires a whole raft of different technologies.

“The process that we are focused on in the ICT is proteomics.

“Proteomics is about the global content of cells. Every cell in your body is dictated by its protein content. Cancer cells are no different.

“Cancer cells have a different compliment of proteins to other cells and some of those proteins are driving the cancer process, stopping the cancer cell from responding to normal body mechanisms of control, stopping the cancer cell from dying.

“If you contain the role these proteins have in the cancer process, then we have ways of treating cancer.

“In the myriad of proteins that populate a cancer cell, we are looking for those proteins that are particularly important in the control of the cell that are telling it to grow are telling it not to die.

“If we can find those proteins and develop new drugs to them that we can turn into medicines, then we have new ways to treat cancer.

“Unlocking the human proteome is a new frontier in cancer research.”

The new mass spectrometer, which will replace a five-year-old model, will allow it to identify proteins on a global scale.

Prof Patterson said: “It can measure thousands of proteins simultaneously using proteomics.

“A mass spectrometer today can interrogate proteins ten times faster than machines that were made a few years ago.

“We’re looking to buy this state-of-the-art, next generation technology.

“Each protein is like a piece of jigsaw in the cell and they all assemble into a picture. We can’t see that picture, we can see the individual jigsaw pieces.

“And with that in mind, a new generation proteomics mass spectrometer will allow us to put that jigsaw together ten times faster.”