Professor Maeve Lowery:

There are two points to this. There are the obvious preventable causes of cancer we know such as obesity and smoking, but they are not easy ones to fix. That is where research and an integrated, joined-up approach to the problem can help impact that. It is complex because no other country has really manage to solve it either. It is difficult.

There are certain cancers where we are seeing an increase in incidence outside of an increase in the known risk factors. Colon cancer is a good example because, across the western world, we have seen a really dramatic increase in the incidence of colon cancer in patients under the age of 50. That is unexplained as of yet, and again it is a major area of research where research can help us answers those questions. We are seeing more incidence of colon cancer in particular, gastric cancers and pancreatic cancers in patients under the age of 50. It does not seem to be explained by an increase in either hereditary cancer diagnoses - something inherited from a gene predisposition - or by obesity or smoking. All these young patients do not have the typical risk-factors. We do not really know why that is, and again, it is something where research can help identify the cause and develop the correct solutions to it. There are two parts to it. There are the obvious ones, which seem simple to fix but are not, and then there is the unknown quantity, which includes Covid-19 but even beyond that.