It is something many of us will have never considered – what it must be like to live with a constantly dry mouth.

But struggling to chew or taste food and finding it difficult to speak or swallow are some of the side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment experienced by patients who have already endured the agony of a head and neck cancer diagnosis.

It is because the Profugs, used to kill the cancer, are also toxic to healthy cells and can cause damage the salivary glands.

Professor Jim McCaul, consultant maxillofacial/head and neck surgeon at Bradford Royal Infirmary, said finding new ways to target and destroy tumours directly is the “holy grail of cancer treatment”.

And with your support, the Bradford Telegraph & Argus Crocus Cancer Appeal could help make that happen.

We are hoping to raise £1 million to buy a new state-of-the-art mass spectrometer for Bradford University’s Institute of Cancer Therapeutics (ICT), which will allow its researchers to study the role of proteins in cancer ten times quicker than ever before.

Our campaign, with the University, Yorkshire Cancer Research and the Sovereign Health Care Charitable Trust, could herald a breakthrough in finding a way to treat cancer in more targeted ways by killing tumours without damaging healthy tissue.

This could potentially end the misery caused by horrific side effects to millions of patients across the world.

Prof McCaul, who works closely with the ICT, is backing the campaign, which he says will keep Bradford at the “cutting edge of cancer care”.

“It used to be the magic bullet method, but these days we need a magic missile to deliver Profugs straight to the cancerous cells.

“We are still looking for that, but things are moving and coming on.

“The work being done at the ICT is highly exciting and the mass spectrometer will be faster, more effective and more accurate.

“The potential is enormous.

“It takes a long time to get there with cancer treatments. I think time is always pressing and family members and loved ones of people with cancer wish it had happened already. The quicker we do the research the quicker new treatments are discovered.”

Head and neck cancer is not as well publicised as many other forms of the disease, but hundreds of patients across Bradford are diagnosed every year.

There are more than 30 different places that cancer can develop in the head and neck area, including the mouth, the throat, as well as rarer cancers of the nose, sinuses, salivary glands and middle ear.

Often patients are referred to the hospital from their GP or dentist and have long and complicated surgery to remove the cancer, with further treatment including chemotherapy, radiotherapy or chemoradiation.

But these treatments can cause horrific side effects.

“The sort of patients we care for are a good example of those whose quality of life could be improved by better treatments,” said Prof McCaul.

“We break bad news to people a lot of the time, but it’s a lot easier to be breaking bad news when you can follow that sentence with ‘we think we can fix it’.

“It’s a more difficult conversation if that’s not the case.

“When people think of cancer, they often think of the last person they know of who died of it.

“Head and neck cancer doesn’t get a lot of press, so when people are diagnosed they often don’t know what’s in store for them.

“This Profug discovery research is going to help.”

Prof McCaul is involved in his own research, with a team of seven and £1.5 million of funding.

He is the chief investigator for a Cancer Research UK-funded clinical trial called LIHNCS, which is looking at the effectiveness of surgeons using Lugol’s iodine as a dye to show any abnormal or precancerous cells.

It is hoped this will improve the chances of complete removal of the tumour to minimise the risk of the cancer returning.

Patients are randomised to have either the normal gold standard treatment or to use Lugol’s iodine during surgery and both sets of patients are then followed up to see if any of the cancer returns.

“We are committed to giving our patients the best treatment in the world,” he said.

And in that vein, he is supporting the T&A Bradford Crocus Cancer Appeal.

“I’m pleased to have been given the chance to support this campaign and back it 100 per cent,” he said.

Find out more about the T&A's £1m Crocus Cancer Appeal