Orchid’s annual Male Cancer Awareness Week gives us the opportunity to highlight essential health awareness messages for men at risk of testicular, prostate or penile cancer. With low awareness of male cancer and the number of men diagnosed each year rising, the annual campaign is more important than ever.

Elite Wine & Whisky are proud supporters of Orchid’s Annual Male Cancer Awareness Week and the cause to raise awareness of different cancers. As Cancer’s can be cured if diagnosed and treated early.

For the remainder of September each customer who purchases a cask £50 will be donated to Orchid: Fighting Male Cancer.

Orchid is the UK’s leading charity working on behalf of anyone affected by or interested in male cancer – prostate, testicular and penile cancer. Established in 1996 by testicular cancer patient Colin Osborne MBE and the oncologist who saved his life, Professor Tim Oliver, Orchid exists to save men’s lives from male cancer through a range of support services, education and awareness campaigns and a pioneering research programme.

Every year over 50,000 men in the UK will be diagnosed with prostate, testicular or penile cancer. Of these men over 49,000 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, over 2,300 will be diagnosed with testicular cancer and over 660 will be diagnosed with the rare penile cancer. Sadly, these numbers are increasing. (Figures: Cancer Research UK Professional, no of new cases between 2015-2017).

Thanks to donations over the past 20 years Orchid has been able to fund research of the highest quality, Orchid has delivered a number of groundbreaking achievements for male cancer patients in the UK and across the globe. Elite Wine & Whisky are keen to continue their ongoing research and support Orchids aims. Read more about Orchid here: https://orchid-cancer.org.uk

Orchids achievements so far:

• The Development of The Orchid Tissue Bank – an international resource for cancer research analysis contains the largest collection of penile cancers in a tissue array in Europe. It is now one of the largest testicular tissue banks in the world and is custodian of the most important series of untreated prostate cancers.
• Helping to validate two ‘tissue proliferation’ markers that may be used to predict a patient’s risk of dying from prostate cancer, helping the patient to choose his treatment – these may be used in standard practice in the clinic in the next few years.
• The introduction of the single shot carboplatin regime following surgery instead of the more toxic radiotherapy as the standard treatment for this stage of testicular cancer disease.
• New highly successful treatments for men with aggressive testicular cancers – part of the reason that 98% of men survive the disease when it’s caught early.
• A new treatment for prostate cancer involving the use of chemotherapy in hormone resistant patients, enabling intermittent hormone therapy to be re-introduced.
• The identification of new factors such as the gene Ki-67 as markers of prostate cancer aggressiveness.
• The identification of different genomic changes in prostate cancer between Chinese and Western patients and considering the genetic risk factors which may explain the differences in cancer incidence between these two ethnicities. This may lead to the application of different, more targeted treatment strategies, based on ethnicity.
• The discovery that the gene ZDHHC14 is often damaged in cases of testicular and prostate cancer.
• The discovery that the risk of testis cancer is increased in people with HIV.
• The discovery of circulating tumour cells as prostate cancer biomarkers.

Please get in touch if you would like to talk to one of our team members about purchasing or expanding your portfolio. Please reference this email when enquiring. Orchid is Registered in England with the Charity Commission No. 1080540 Company Registered in England No. 3963360