YORK academics are pioneering two major research projects which could create significant improvements in women's health.

Researchers at the University of York are developing a gel to combat early stage cervical cancer, which would end the practice of removing abnormal cells by surgery.

Cervical cancer, a disease which kills almost a quarter of a million women worldwide each year, is caused by a common sexually transmitted virus, HPV.

The virus turns cells cancerous by preventing the necessary "suicide" which they go through, but the gel works by kick-starting their death, leaving normal cells unharmed.

The team developing the gel, led by Professor Jo Milner, hopes to carry out UK clinical trials soon and, if successful, similar gels could one day be developed to treat other cancers on accessible surfaces.

Meanwhile, a team of researchers has been established at the university to look at ways to improve the health and welfare of childbearing women and their babies.

Six new jobs are being created at the mother and infant research unit, in the department of health sciences, which is headed by Professor Mary Renfrew.

Its key project is the Early Labour Support And Assess-ment Trial, which will test the care for women in early labour.

Professor Renfrew said: "We are testing whether the care midwives give in early labour at home could be better than the care they currently receive in hospital. It may be that staying at home with a midwife could reduce anxiety in the mother, and leave less time for inappropriate interventions once she does go to hospital.

"This in turn could lead to a reduction in the number of interventions and the rate of assisted and caesarean births."

The study involves working with six collaborating centres in Yorkshire and 11 different hospitals and birth centres, as well as primary care trusts in the region.

The unit has also been commissioned by the Health Development Agency to set up the new national collaborating centres for maternal and child nutrition, which aim to try to reduce inequalities in health by improving maternal and child nutrition, initially by increasing breastfeeding.

Updated: 14:09 Thursday, November 25, 2004