A CANCER researcher and leukaemia survivor has spoken in York about the future of cancer research.

Dr Vicky Forster is a postdoctoral research scientist at Newcastle University, whose research looks at errors in DNA which cause cancer and the possibilities of less-toxic drug combinations for the treatment of leukaemia.

She was diagnosed with childhood leukaemia at the age of seven, and underwent chemotherapy treatment, and has now been cancer free for more than 20 years.

Dr Forster said: "I always liked science - I always wanted to be an astronaut - and used to ask the doctors a lot of questions all the time, probably questions I shouldn't have asked as a seven-year-old. I had some absolutely fantastic doctors who considering how busy they are, sat and talked to me and took time to let me know what was going on. That definitely played a role in my choice of career."

Dr Forster visited York on Monday to talk to York Skeptics about how there is no 'catch-all' cure for cancer, because cancer is "a collective description of abnormal pathological cell growth", which manifests in many different ways.

She said: "It's a complicated problem. Sometimes people have an idea that cancer is one thing, but it's a collection of, broadly speaking, 200 diseases. Saying we're going to cure them all with the same thing is hugely optimistic, but what we're doing is finding treatments for various cancers and improving survival rates where we can."

In the 20 years since she was diagnosed, Dr Forster said the survival rate for childhood leukaemia had risen from about 65 per cent to about 90 per cent, and other cancer survival rates had also increased thanks to early detection and treatments that directly target cancerous cells, rather than broader treatments.

She said: "It's a great time to be in the field.

"It's unlikely there will ever be a single cure for cancer, however there are an increasing number of effective treatments that result in people being cured. Like me."

Rob McDermott, from York Skeptics, said: "The talk went down very well. It's a lot more complicated than you'd think, and we should trust the scientists who are researching it. They aren't just doing it because big pharmaceutical companies are paying them.

"People like Dr Forster have personal reasons to do this work, and she's not the only one. People are doing it genuinely because they want to help people."