Professor Rodney Scott from the University of Newcastle* is part of an international team that has finally proven that taking a regular low dose of aspirin halves the long-term risk of cancer.

A trial, published today in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, focused on people with Lynch syndrome, an inherited genetic disorder that affects genes responsible for proof reading and correcting errors in DNA.

The study was led by Professor Sir John Burn from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom and involved scientists and clinicians from 43 centres in 16 countries following more than 800 patients for up to 10 years.