THE academics behind groundbreaking cancer fighting research at the University of Bradford have explained how it could revolutionise how people with the disease are treated.

The Bradford Institute of Cancer Therapeutics provided an update on its work on a cancer "smart bomb," which targets cancer cells without harming normal cells, at the British Science Festival yesterday.

Targeting Tumours was one of dozens of lectures held at the University on the second day of the festival.

The event was last held in the city in 2011, and it was then when the team first announced its discoveries.

In the four years since then it has teamed up with the Telegraph & Argus for the successful Bradford Crocus Cancer appeal, which helped fund a proteomics mass spectrometer, vital to the work.

Despite the breakthrough, those attending the talk heard that there was still a long way to go before the treatment became available, and there was much that needed to be done behind the scenes.

Addressing a packed lecture theatre, Professor Laurence Patterson highlighted the importance of "personalised medicine" in treating cancer.

He said that for much of the last century cancer had been treated through a "one size fits all" approach, but recent breakthroughs in mapping the human genome meant the treatments could now be suited to individuals.

The technique uses colchicine, found in the crocus flower, to specifically target cancer cells. Toxic to the cancer, the team developed a way for the treatment to only become toxic once it is absorbed by the cancer. The trigger is an enzyme in the cancerous cells, and personalised medicine will be used to identify whether that enzyme is present in people's cancer.

Incanthera is a company set up to develop the treatment, and the company's chief executive officer Simon Ward described the next steps of the process to make the treatment ready for use on humans.

He said: "People think that treatments and medicines go from discovery to being immediately used by humans. However, there is a great deal of safety testing that needs to be done.

"The pre-clinical stage of a treatment's development can cost over £1 million and take two to three years to complete."

Mr Ward said safety testing alone could take a year and £500,000 to complete.

Speaking after the talk, Prof Patterson said that while it could be frustrating that progress developing the treatment seemed slow, it was all a part of the process of medical development.

He said: "It is not bureaucracy holding things up, we have done really well in the last few years.

"When we first revealed the breakthrough, and got a lot of publicity for it, we had a paper on it and some work. Now we have a proper channel to develop the drug. In that sense we've achieved a lot, we are ready to move forward."