• Question: whats the most interesting concept of cancer?

    Asked by feet520many on 4 Apr 2025.
    • Photo: Charlotte Heaven

      Charlotte Heaven answered on 4 Apr 2025:

      This is going to be different depending on who you ask as cancer research is really broad. Some people are interested in how the cancer develops, some are interested in how we detect the cancer and some are interested in new drugs and treatments.
      For me the most interesting thing is the difference in how different cells respond to treatment. So when we treat the cancer with radiotherapy for example, some of the bunch of cells are immediately killed off, some are damaged but don’t die and some survive. I am really interested in why these cells respond in different ways and whether we can target them differently, so could we introduce a second treatment just to get that bit of the tumour which didn’t die the first time and would that be the same in different patients with different tumours.

    • Photo: Sarah McCafferty

      Sarah McCafferty answered on 4 Apr 2025:

      One thing i found really interesting was learning about the transmissible cancer that occurs in Tasmanian devils. It’s actually the cancer cells that spread the disease, not a cancer causing virus like HPV

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