CANCER researchers in York could launch the world's first investigation into the effect of oils on prostate cancer, if a bid for 15 million euros of funding is successful.

Professor Norman Maitland, who runs the Cancer Research Unit at the University of York, linked up with Professor Keith Coupland from Hull University, who invented Lorenzo's Oil - the topic of a Hollywood film of the same name - and colleagues in Bristol and across Europe to bid for the European Union funding.

Professor Maitland said the collaboration started during a curriculum meeting for the Hull York Medical School (HYMS) which launches later this year.

He said: "I had never met Professor Coupland, who runs the Lipid Research Centre in Hull, before we got together over a HYMS curriculum meeting and we talked about our interests.

"It turns out that there is some evidence to suggest that these natural oils could have quite a dramatic effect on prostate cancer.

"We involved some former colleagues of mine at Bristol, so it's a meeting of different expertises."

Professor Maitland said some of these natural oils, or lipids, appear in people's diets, and countries such as Japan, which has a different lipid intake, has low incidence of prostate cancer.

Professor Maitland said: "The oils could work to prevent prostate cancer and could also help in the treatment of prostate cancer - it could work in both stages.

"If bidding is successful this would be the first serious research into whether it will work in prostate cancer."

The application is in the final stages and if successful funding could take a year to come through.

Updated: 08:37 Tuesday, April 22, 2003