A SOUTHAMPTON surgeon today launches an international clinical trial aimed at improving survival rates from the UK's second biggest killer - bowel cancer.

Professor John Primrose, of Southampton University's surgical unit, will lead the £100,000 UK arm of the Europe-wide trial, funded by the Cancer Research Campaign.

Bowel cancer claims 47 lives a day in the UK, and if not caught at an early stage, the disease can spread to other organs, particularly the liver.

The three-year trial aims to improve survival rates of patients whose bowel cancer has spread to the liver by giving chemotherapy before and after liver surgery.

Currently patients undergo surgery to remove the affected part of the liver, but in around two-thirds of cases the cancer returns later on.

This is despite surgeons removing all obvious signs of the disease in the liver, meaning there must be microscopic traces of cancer left behind which keep growing.

Professor Primrose - who works at Southampton General Hospital - and his co-investigators, oncologist Dr Tim Iveson and Liverpool-based surgeon Graham Poston, hope that delivering chemotherapy drugs to patients before and after the operation will wipe out any remaining deposits of the disease.

Prof Primrose said: "It is hoped the combination of drugs and surgery will ensure all traces of the cancer are removed, thus making the disease less likely to recur. We will be using a state-of-the-art chemotherapy regime and hope in the long-term to be pioneering a way to improve survival from colon cancer."

At least 400 patients from across Europe, including 200 from 16 UK hospitals, will be recruited to the trial and randomly divided by computer into two groups.

Prof Gordon McVie, director general of the Cancer Research Campaign, said: "If it is found that this procedure does improve survival, the use of chemotherapy before and after surgery will become standard treatment.

"If it doesn't, then patients will be spared unnecessary chemotherapy, with its sometimes unpleasant side-effects."