CANCER patients at the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust are helping to save lives in the future.

The trust has the most patients participating in trials in the Yorkshire Cancer Research Network of any district general hospital. Only the cancer centre at Leeds Teaching Hospital enters more patients into research studies.

Around 1,500 patients in Huddersfield and Halifax are currently being treated or followed up within a clinical trial.

The information was released as part of World Cancer Day on February 4.

Doctors say that many treatments which are now standard have come about through trials which local patients were part of.

One example of this is the use of Trastuzumab (Herceptin) which is given after surgery for breast cancer.

Around 170 new patients joined trials in the past year at the Trust – almost double the numbers in 2006/7.