A Bradford cancer researcher whose work will benefit from the Telegraph & Argus Bradford Crocus Cancer Appeal is urging people across the city to help us smash our £1 million target.

Dr Chris Sutton, senior lecturer in proteomics and mass spectrometry at the University of Bradford, has spoken of the importance of our most ambitious campaign for more than a decade and how it will help the war on cancer here in the city.

The T&A Bradford Crocus Cancer Appeal will buy the University’s Institute of Cancer Therapeutics a new mass proteomic spectrometer, which could help its scientists pioneer less toxic ways of treating the disease more than ten times faster than before.

Dr Sutton will be taking part in the Great North Swim on Sunday, June 16, to raise money for Yorkshire Cancer Research, which has joined us, along with the university and principal supporter the Sovereign Health Care Charitable Trust, to mount the T&A Bradford Crocus Cancer Appeal.

He signed up to take part in the event for the third time before our charity was set up, and told sponsors that if he raised £1,000 he would swim two miles next year.

But now he has hit that target, he is welcoming donations for the T&A Bradford Crocus Cancer Appeal.

Dr Sutton, who has worked in the ICT for almost eight years, said: “I am doing this for the war on cancer in Bradford. I will probably be one of the main beneficiaries of the campaign, because it will buy the state-of-the-art equipment we need to look at proteins, which are the problems in cancer and the target of new drug discoveries.

“It will allow us to look at two areas that could benefit the local community.

“One of those is a type of breast cancer, called triple negative breast cancer, which is harder to treat.

“It affects a significantly higher proportion of women of an Asian background than a caucasian background and women aged younger than 50, which is when screening for breast cancer begins.

“The other area is head and neck cancer and the potential causes, some of which are to do with diet. Betel nuts, which are used by the Asian community, have been found to be carcinogenic.

“These things will give us a focus on the local community and I hope people will support it.”