do you research about cancer? – MRC Festival Zone 2018

Lauren Burns answered on 1 Jun 2018:

I do not research cancer, but in Data Science at Swansea University, I have many co-workers and friends who use Data Science to explore cancer, which is an interesting, alternative method that we are fortunate enough to have. Rather than taking samples of cancer cells, in Data Science we take records of lots of people who have cancer and can find different patterns and identify potential causes that would otherwise go unnoticed during smaller-scale research. However, I am sure some of my MRC festival colleagues may research cancer in a variety of ways, and will be delighted to talk more to you about your interests in that field!

David Grainger answered on 1 Jun 2018:

I do not work on cancer cells but my work could one day help cancer patients. Currently, one of the best treatments for patients with blood cancers is to give them a bone marrow transplant. This works by killing all blood cells – both the healthy and cancerous ones and then giving the patient back some healthy blood stem cells that can make all the blood cells they need. These blood stem cells live in our bone marrow and so this is why we hear of people having a bone marrow transplant. In fact, they are having a blood stem cell transplant!

Finding a bone marrow donor can sometimes be tricky as the blood stem cells from the donor need to match the patient. The aim of my work is to make these blood stem cells in a test tube and therefore get rid of the need for people to donate bone marrow. If we are successful, one day it could be that the cancer patient has a skin cell taken, turned into a blood stem cell and then put into their bone marrow. This means the stem cell will match them perfectly.

So although I don’t directly work on understanding cancer, I do hope to contribute to curing it.

Claire Donald answered on 1 Jun 2018:

I don’t work on cancer myself but I do have colleagues that work on viruses that cause cancer, like the Human papillomavirus (HPV). This virus can cause changes to a woman’s cervix which can lead to cervical cancer. There is now a vaccine to help prevent against infections from HPV that is given to girls aged 12-13 years old. It is thanks to the work done by people like my colleagues that this vaccine was developed. It will lower the number of cases of this kind of cancer and save many lives.

Nathan Clarke answered on 1 Jun 2018:

One of the great things about science is the unexpected ways that research areas meet and crossover. Colleagues in my group are doing great research into cancer, tinnitus, hearing loss and balance. Did you know that common chemotherapy for cancer can cause hearing loss and tinnitus? With so many more people surviving cancer, it’s increasingly important to understand these issues to improve the quality of life of those who survive.

Laurent Dupays answered on 1 Jun 2018:

Funnily enough, even if I am a biologist I am working on the only organ in the body, the heart, which doesn’t develop cancer (or only in rare cases).

Our body tissues are making new cells all the time. They make new cells in order to grow and also to replace old dead cells. The process by which new cells are made is called cell division. Cell division is occurring all the time. Around two trillion cell divisions occur in the average human body every day! When cell division goes wrong there is a risk of cancerous cell growth.

Because the cells in the heart do not divide, heart cancer is a rare condition.

Joey Shepherd answered on 1 Jun 2018:

Not at the moment but I have in the past. One of the graet things about being a scientist is that you can use practical skills you’ve learned in the lab to work on different areas – also, there is lots of cross over between different specialties. So for instance, I was once working on a way to make certain areas of blood vessels glow if they were at risk of becoming diseased through fat; I then took the skills I had learned and worked in a new job in a cancer lab working out how a particular anti-cancer drug was able to attack cancer blood vessels. I don’t work on cancer any more but many of my colleagues do – I work in a Dental school now and many of my colleagues work on head and neck cancer.

Jason Chu answered on 1 Jun 2018:

So I don’t research about cancer. I’m investigating the role of the immune system in wound healing.
But everyone in my lab around me works in cancer research. I stick out a wee bit like a sore thumb. But this is the great thing about science.
A lot of the techniques we use are similar.
And we are constantly sharing ideas and helping each other out.
It’s a massive collaboration between fields.
So I’m learning a lot from cancer researchers and how it relates to skin repair. And hopefully what I learn can be useful for them as well!

Donna MacCallum answered on 1 Jun 2018:

I don’t research on cancer, but people with cancer or who have had cell or organ transplants are more likely to get fungal infections (which I do work on). We know that people undergoing cancer treatment have no or reduced immune cell function, so the fungal cells take advantage of this and start infections

Ashley Akbari answered on 1 Jun 2018:

I have completed research projects working on cancer research as part of Data Science projects, using big datasets on the population of Wales to try and identify opportunities to improve the services and treatments people receive. We work only with anonymised data, so we cannot identify people in our dataset, but we look for trends and patterns in the data to see where improvements and advances can be made. We work closely with partners in the NHS and members of the public to make sure the research we do has a real world impact and benefits the people providing and receiving cancer services.

Damian Mole answered on 2 Jun 2018:

Yes, one of things we look at is how inflammation and cancer are interlinked. Its a fascinating area. What is especially important is how the immune system tackles cancer in the body. In fact, a lot of new cancer treatments are based on harnessing the power of the body’s own immune system to attack cancer.

Alex Haragan answered on 2 Jun 2018:

Yes I do – my research is almost entirely on cancer!

More specifically I research lung cancer and how we can get our immune system (that normally fights infections) to fight cancer.

I’m also a doctor so I have treated many patients with cancer (I once spent a year working in a specialist cancer only hospital) and its amazing to see all the new developments happening!

Cancer is a very big disease – and although I focus on lung cancer, I am interested in all types and I think that certain parts of my work will also help other cancers in time.

Hannah Farley answered on 3 Jun 2018:

Nope, I work on a really rare disease that gives kids really snotty lung infections and can sometimes make them have really bad heart defects. Lots of times we don’t really know where the next big break through will come in science, so its important that we research all the diseases, as well as the ones that affect the most people. Roughly 1 in 10,000 kids have the condition I work on – that’s still a lot in the whole of the UK, and for each of the families that are affected it’s a big deal.

Camille Parsons answered on 4 Jun 2018:

No, I currently do not do any cancer research. However the statistical techniques I use as part of my job can be applied to pretty much any biological area of research, it just happens that at the moment I work with clinical doctors who are most interested in our skeleton and muscles.

Daniel Rhodes answered on 4 Jun 2018:

My project is not focused on any one disease, but is aimed instead at finding drugs to treat many diseases, including cancers. So I don’t directly work on cancer, but hopefully my work may help cancer patients in the future.

Laura Hemming answered on 4 Jun 2018:

I don’t personally research cancer, but in the world of Psychology and mental health there is lots of research going on which looks at the psychological effects that cancer can have. This is really important research to consider, given that experiencing cancer can be extremely difficult both for the person diagnosed and also their family and friends.

Joaquin Zacarias Cabeza answered on 7 Jun 2018:

Yes, my current research project is to find out the epigentic signatures in the development of mesothelioma cancer but not only by asbestos exposure but also by carbo nanotubes fibres expousure. We analyse the DNA methylation from inflamatory or mesothelioma cells and also the chromatin accessibility which this will correlate with the gene expression.The patient samples from the hospital are processed in the lab but we also work with mice model.

Question: do you research about cancer?

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