Christie Hospital
Encyclopedia
Withington
Withington is a suburban area of the City of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies south of Manchester city centre, about south of Fallowfield, north-east of Didsbury, and east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near the centre-to-south edges of the Greater Manchester Urban Area; in the...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, and is one of the largest cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
treatment centres in Europe. The Christie became a NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Foundation Trust
An NHS foundation trust is part of the National Health Service in England and has gained a degree of independence from the Department of Health and local NHS strategic health authority.Foundation Trusts are represented by the , .-Function:...
in April 2007 and is also an international leader in cancer research and development, and home to the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research.
Foundation of the Christie Hospital
Sir Joseph Whitworth left money in his will of 1887 to be spent at the discretion of three legatees. Some of that money was used to buy land off Oxford Road, adjacent to Owens College and intended to allow the movement of the central Manchester hospitals out of the crowded city centre. A committee chaired by one of the Whitworth legatees, Richard ChristieRichard Copley Christie
Richard Copley Christie was an English lawyer, University teacher, philanthropist and bibliophile.He was born at Lenton in Nottinghamshire, the son of a mill owner. He was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford where he was tutored by Mark Pattison, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1857...
, was established in 1890 and, partly funded by a legacy of £10,000 from Daniel Proctor, a Cancer Pavilion and Home for Incurables was founded on the site in 1892 some distance south-east of the eye hospital. In 1901 it was renamed the Christie Hospital in honour of Richard Christie and his wife Mary. It was the only hospital in the provinces for the treatment of cancer alone and active in pathological research.
Foundation of the Holt Institute
In 1901, the Christie Management Committee agreed to the request of Dr Robert Biggs Wild to spend £50 on the equipment necessary to test the efficacy of X ray treatment, after promising results reported from London and from three patients treated in the Physics Laboratory of Professor SchusterArthur Schuster
Sir Franz Arthur Friedrich Schuster FRS was a German-born British physicist known for his work in spectroscopy, electrochemistry, optics, X-radiography and the application of harmonic analysis to physics...
locally in Owens College. The Roentgen apparatus was purchased, but no records survive of treatment, and by 1907 the equipment was no longer being used (it was given to the Skin Hospital in 1910). By 1905, Dr Wild had become interested in the therapeutic use of the newly discovered radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
and experimented, once more with aid from Professor Schuster, on three patients. Radium was expensive, however, and the management refused to purchase any more until the results of tests from London hospitals were available. By 1914, a leading local doctor, Sir William Milligan
William Milligan
William Milligan was a renowned Scottish theologian. He studied at the University of Halle in Germany, and eventually became a professor at the University of Aberdeen. He is best known for his commentary on the Revelation of St. John...
, had begun a campaign in the 'Manchester Guardian' to raise funds for radium treatment. Appealing to a mixture of local pride and the contemporary enthusiasm for the curative powers of radium, an appeal was launched, on the advice of Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics...
, for £25,000. An initial contribution of £2000 from local brewer Edward Holt
Edward Holt
Edward Holt was an English footballer. His regular position was as a forward. He was born in Withington, Manchester, Lancashire. He played for Manchester United and Newton Heath Athletic.-External links:*...
was not initially much emulated, but following the intervention of the Mayor, a series of 'Radium days' were organized which eventually raised enough money to start a small Radium Institute, initially housed in the Manchester Royal Infirmary. In 1921 it moved to new premises in Nelson Street donated by Sir Edward and Lady Holt, and became the Manchester and District Radium Institute.
By contrast with the dispersed and competitive provision of London radiotherapy, Manchester became the first provider of a centralised radiotherapy service, which would have long-lasting effects on the patterns of British cancer care.
The Christie at Withington
In 1932 the Institute, renamed as the Holt Radium Institute, and the Christie Hospital moved to a new joint site in WithingtonWithington
Withington is a suburban area of the City of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies south of Manchester city centre, about south of Fallowfield, north-east of Didsbury, and east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near the centre-to-south edges of the Greater Manchester Urban Area; in the...
and began to be jointly managed although a formal merger did not occur until 1946.
Ralston Paterson was appointed as Director of the Radium Institute in 1931, and went on to build a world recognised centre for the treatment of cancer by radiation. Among the team was his wife Edith Paterson, who started research work at the Christie in 1938, initially unpaid, and who became a world-renowned pioneer in biological dosimetry, childhood cancers and anti-cancer drug treatment methods.
After Ralston Paterson's retirement, Dr. Eric Craig Easson was appointed Director of the Christie Hospital. He became world famous for his contribution to the curability of Hodgkin's disease and to cancer education. He was given a personal Professorial Chair at the University of Manchester, and was President of the Royal College of Radiologists (1975 - 1977). He was government adviser on cancer for many years, and was a prime mover in the Union Internationale Contre Cancer in Geneva, as well as the WHO cancer group.
During Easson's tenure as Director, many doctors from throughout the world visited the Christie Hospital to absorb its ethos.
Early impetuses to research came from new local diseases of industrialisation such as mule spinners' cancer
Mule spinners' cancer
Mule spinners' cancer or Mule-spinners' cancer was a cancer, an epithelioma of the scrotum. It was first reported in 1887 in a cotton mule spinner...
and chimney sweep's cancer, and the search for links to machine oils and airborne soot. Subsequent therapeutic milestones have included:
- 1932 - development of the Manchester Method, the first international standard for radium treatment
- 1944 - world's first clinical trial of diethylstilbestrolDiethylstilbestrolDiethylstilbestrol is a synthetic nonsteroidal estrogen that was first synthesized in 1938. Human exposure to DES occurred through diverse sources, such as dietary ingestion from supplemented cattle feed and medical treatment for certain conditions, including breast and prostate cancers...
(Stilboestrol) for breast cancer - 1970 - world's first clinical use of tamoxifenTamoxifenTamoxifen is an antagonist of the estrogen receptor in breast tissue via its active metabolite, hydroxytamoxifen. In other tissues such as the endometrium, it behaves as an agonist, hence tamoxifen may be characterized as a mixed agonist/antagonist...
(Nolvadex) for breast cancer - 1986 - world's first use of cultured bone marrow for leukaemia treatment
- 1991 - world's first single harvest blood stem-cell transplant
Paterson Institute for Cancer Research
When the Patersons retired in 1962, Professor Laszlo Lajtha was appointed as the first full-time director of the research laboratories, which he named after the Patersons. Lajtha added research into his own fields of interest, experimental haematology and epithelial biology. New research laboratories, provided by the Women's Trust Fund, were opened in 1966. The Women's Trust Fund was a local charity, chaired by Lady Margaret Holt, daughter-in-law of Sir Edward Holt, who left her entire estate of over £8 million to the Christie when she died in 1997. Core funding for the laboratories was secured from the Medical Research Council and the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC). The CRC also located the CRC Department of Medical Oncology, led by Professor Derek Crowther, at the Paterson.Professor Lajtha was succeeded as Director in 1983 by Professor David Harnden, who introduced molecular biology and built-up cancer genetics. He set up a new Department of Drug Development which combined various groups working on drugs already in the clinic and new generation drugs. He was briefly succeeded by Professor T. Michael Dexter before Professor Nic Jones became the Director in March 1999.
The laboratory has been further enlarged with support from the Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund, the Cancer Research Campaign, the Christie Hospital Research Endowments and, once again, the Women's Trust Fund. In 1981 the Cancer Research Campaign took over sole responsibility for the major funding of the Institute but the Christie Hospital Research Endowments also provide much support.
Services
The Christie registers around 12,500 new patients and treats about 40,000 patients every year. It is the lead cancer centre for the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cancer Network, covering a population of 3.2 million, and runs clinics at 16 other general hospitals.Around 15% of patients are referred from outside Greater Manchester and Cheshire, and there is also a private patients unit. Patients are referred from district general hospitals, having already had their cancer diagnosed.
The Christie is the largest cancer treatment centre of its kind in Europe and an international leader in research and development. As of 2010 The Christie is home to the largest clinical trials unit of its kind in Europe.
The Christie provides services including specialist surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, palliative and supportive care and endocrinology. It has one of the largest radiotherapy departments in the world, with over 80,000 radiotherapy treatments a year. It annually delivers over 30,000 chemotherapy treatments and undertakes around 3,700 operations every year. It has one of the eight dedicated teenage cancer units in the United Kingdom. It has 257 inpatient beds with an average length of stay of seven days.
The hospital has one of the largest clinical trials units in the United Kingdom for phase I/II cancer trials, with around 1,200 patients going on new trials, with plans to double over the next few years to be one of largest clinical trials units in the world.
It is a partner in the Manchester Cancer Research Centre and home to the North West Cancer Information Service, the cancer registry for the whole of the North West region, and the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre
Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre
The University of Manchester Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre is a purpose built facility designed to exploit the potential for Positron Emission Tomography in oncology, neuroscience and psychiatry research...
.
The Christie became a NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Foundation Trust
An NHS foundation trust is part of the National Health Service in England and has gained a degree of independence from the Department of Health and local NHS strategic health authority.Foundation Trusts are represented by the , .-Function:...
on 1 April 2007. It has a total annual turnover of around £143 million. Eight percent of its income is from private patients. Around 2000 staff and over 300 volunteers work at the Christie.