When it comes to cancer, radiotherapy is a mainstay of modern day cancer treatment. As we recently highlighted, it’s a little known fact it plays a key role in treating around four in ten people with cancer. But sometimes radiotherapy on its own isn’t enough, particularly if the cancer is advanced or has spread to other parts of the body. So the combined forces of chemotherapy and radiotherapy are often used together.

Each treatment has its unique merits: radiotherapy delivers a localised attack to destroy the primary tumour – the cancer’s chief stronghold. Meanwhile, chemotherapy travels around the bloodstream to try and kill off any dividing cancer cells that may have broken rank and started growing elsewhere.

For several types of cancer, this combo of chemotherapy and radiotherapy together has been proven to reduce the likelihood of any remaining cancer cells being able to regroup and start growing elsewhere in the body as a secondary tumour.

There’s a lot of research looking to establish the best treatment for cancers that start in the womb (endometrium). And in particular who should have what. Researchers in the USA and Europe have looked at using both chemotherapy and radiotherapy after surgery for women at a high risk of the cancer coming back.

This combined treatment has been useful in other gynaecological cancers. But there’s not yet enough proof to say whether it should become routine. So a group of London-based researchers, with help from Cancer Research UK funding, are now running a clinical trial to find out if having radiotherapy and chemotherapy after surgery could further improve the outlook for womb cancer patients.

Watch this short video – featuring trial co-ordinator Dr Melanie Powell – to find out more about the PORTEC-3 trial and how it could bring benefits to women with womb cancer:

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