• Question: How do you guys go about finding cures? I realize you take samples of cancer cells but then what tests are run? And how are they carried out?

    Asked by jackyboy1999 to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 20 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by candyflossmonster.
    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      Hallo Jackyboy

      This is changing very fast. The first test is a pathologist will section the sample and look at it under a microscope. That will let him tell what type of cells are present. For example, with a lung cancer specimen he would look at the size of the cells; small cells are completely different from “non-small cells” and respond to different drugs.

      Nowadays we would like to know about the genes, in particular which genes are damaged. We might send a sample off to a sequencing machine to find the structure of its DNA. However this technique isn’t really developed enough yet – we don’t know how to handle the data fully. Every year, this sort of test gets better and more informative.

      Maybe in another ten years we will be much more certain about what caused any particular cancer to happen. That would help treat it.

    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      While Robert talked about the diagnosis and the pathology, I will answer your question from a different angle: How we use cancer cells for our research.

      For all different kinds of cancer so called “cell lines” exist. Which means these cells have been cancer cell samples from a patient and now the cells are maintained in a dish. They divide and are immortal- which means you can grow them forever in a dish. We still use cell lines that scientists established many many years ago- the first cell line still widely used today are HeLa cells from 1951!

      These cancer cell lines are a really important tool to understand more about cancer cell biology. We test all kinds of things on them. Drug screenings are done to see which ones are effective to kill cells, and which concentration is best. We take a look on how the cells move, see if we can stop them from moving.
      We use them a lot to understand more about the function of certain genes in cancer cells. I used a cancer cell line and switched off a certain gene and looked what happened. The cells are dividing less and move less. Now I can conclude that this gene is necessary for movement and cell division.

    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      Hi @jackyboy, let me tell you about why we’re doing what we’re doing…

      From the work we have done in the past and from reading other people’s research, we have devised a scientific hypothesis (a scientific question that you can do experiments to find the answer for) that Salmonella can be used to target tumour cells and deliver a therapeutic protein.

      We are now doing lots of experiments to see if we can make this work. First of all we are using conditions that mimic the low oxygen environment found in tumours and testing our bacteria to see what happens. Once we understand fully what is going on we will then move on to work with tumours. There are two ways we could do this: try and work with solid tumours that have been removed and then keep them alive in the lab for our experiments. This has problems associated because we would need to ensure that the tumour had the same characteristics of a tumour growing inside the body. The second way would be to use mice that had tumours. We will try and do it the first way so that we can try and avoid the need to use animals, but I know it will be very difficult and challenging.

      All of this work will take time so it will be months and maybe even years before we are sure that we can do it for real.

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