TENS of thousands of patients are set to benefit from a multimillion-pound investment in Hampshire that could transform the future of cancer treatment.

The Advertiser can reveal how a Romsey professor has been chosen to lead up one of just eight places in the UK to receive a huge cash injection from Cancer Research UK to run a specialist clinical trials unit.

The £3.5m cash boost will enable the centre to trial pioneering new drugs and therapies which could one day become standard treatment for cancer patients both nationally and even around the world.

Based in the heart of Southampton the team, led by Romsey Professor, Gareth Griffiths, is the only one in the south to receive a share of the £45million invested by CRUK. Over the next five years the team will be funded to find better and kinder treatments in the fight against cancer - and they are already recruiting cancer patients willing to take part in the trials.

They are asking people like Sue Endersby from Totton to play an active role in fighting the disease.

The gran of two was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2012 after initially believing she had pulled a muscle in her groin while gardening.

It was only after her doctor sent her for a scan that she was told she had cancer.

Sue was offered the chance to take part in a clinical trial for lymphoma patients involving an immunotherapy drug called rituximab instead of having the standard chemotherapy treatment. It involved one monthly injection in hospital that took around ten minutes.

Now she’s just marked five years in remission and says she feels lucky to have been offered the trial by the Southampton CRUK Clinical Trials Unit. But it’s partly down to her willingness to take part that doctors are now even better armed to fight the disease. The 59 year old Blue Star bus driver - who currently drives the Quay Connect service - said it felt “great” to be part of the revolutionary research.

She said: “That’s why I did it - so I could help other people.”

Prof. Griffiths added: “We are delighted and very proud that Southampton has been given this investment. Our clinical research enables us to translate discoveries from the lab and improve cancer treatments, giving more patients the best chance of beating their disease. The new funding will allow us to increase the number of clinical trials we are able to do, and enable us to develop into new areas.”