• Question: Have you always been interested in researching cancer? What gave you the motivation to start this research in the first place?

    Asked by crayon to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 12 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      hi crayon,

      I wouldn’t say I always wanted to do cancer research. I was interested in neuroscience and I wanted to do research on some disease. I think cancer is the most researched disease you can find! So one thing led to another…

      My motivation for research: I am curious, I ask questions and I want to find out!

    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      A secret (please don’t tell my boss) – I’m not interested in researching cancer. I’m interested in how cells move. I got interested in that because I love looking down microscopes (even now, after doing it for 30 years). And watching what happens live.

      It turns out that the way cells move is really important to how cancer spreads, so CR-UK hired me to study the way cancer cells move. Isn’t that wonderful? I get paid a salary to do what I like doing?

      And it turns out that we’ve discovered some really important things about why cancer spreads. So CR-UK were right to hire me, even though I mostly do what I want. Lucky all round.

    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      My interest is actually in bacteria and trying to understand why they cause infection. They are pretty clever at hiding from the immune system and invading cells and as I learnt more about them, I realised that we might be able to put some of their natural abilities to good use, so this is why I became interested in cancer. I do some of my work alongside one of my colleagues who is a chemist and he is interested in designing and developing drugs that can treat cancer in the right location. We put our heads together and realised that we could help each other so now we work together. This works pretty well actually because we have different specialities and each have different ideas. And of course, he can answer many of my chemistry questions!

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