• Question: are you working on a cure for cancer?

    Asked by anon-198571 to Srinath, Natasha, Nana, Luisa, Gautam, Alex on 11 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Alexander Allen

      Alexander Allen answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      Not directly but a lot of my work is designed to be able to engineer machines and medicines that may be of use one day in the battle against cancer and the treatments.

      There is a problem when discussing cancer and that is that cancer is not just one thing. Cancer happens when mutations occur within a cell and it causes the cells programming to go haywire. Essentially the cell will replicate too fast and not die quick enough thus it causes very quick growing tissues which take nutrients from your body and can spread to other areas. This can happen anywhere and sadly no two cancers are the same… They are individual cases and lung is different to liver, which is different to bone, which is different to blood etc.

      It is important to look for treatments and methods of preventing this kind of mutation (not smoking, healthy diet etc. all reduce the chance of this initial cell mutation). We know how to treat some of the time and prevent some of the time… Research continues and my work could eventually aid (in some minor, as yet unknown, fashion) in the treatment of this disease.

    • Photo: Natasha Dowey

      Natasha Dowey answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      I’m not, but thankfully many talented people are. So many treatments have been created already that allow lots of different cancers to be treated, by medicines, radiation and operations. Some cancers can even be treated to the point of complete removal, with people living cancer-free for a very long time after treatment. There is a long way to go, but science has been able to do incredible things- the creation of antibiotics, the almost total eradication of polio (a disease that was once feared all over the world)… I have faith we’ll get there one day.

    • Photo: Marialuisa Crosatti

      Marialuisa Crosatti answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      No, not directly

    • Photo: Srinath Kasturirangan

      Srinath Kasturirangan answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      My primary job at work is focused on developing novel therapies for cancer. You may have heard of Immunotherapy – where the body’s immune system itself is trained to fight cancer. In my job, my main focus is to teach our body’s immune system to recognize cancer as something that is not “normal” so the immune cells in the body can attack and kill cancer cells, just like how it can attack and kill bacteria or infection that invades your body.

    • Photo: Nana Odom

      Nana Odom answered on 12 Mar 2019:


      It could be indirectly…but I am working using data to develop clinic decision tools which can help identify medications that work better and what interventions that can improve patient outcomes.
      I could also get involved with designing technology that can be used to contribute to fighting against cancer

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