• Question: Can you find a cure or like to make a cure for cancer and other diseases?

    Asked by 09ruddp to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 3 Jul 2012. This question was also asked by whgraceandaim, whnickandmatt.
    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      There are lots of different cancers so unfortunately there need to be lots of different cures developed.

      I don’t work on cancers so I don’t think I will ever develop a cure for cancer (I hope other people do though). It would be nice if I could find a treatment to mean that less chickens carry the food poisoning bug that I work on.

    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      As Emma says, there are many different types of cancer and each of them will require different types of treatment. My work might lead to the availability of a drug that may work for some cancers, probabely in combination with other drugs. Where I see cancer treatment heading is towards personalised medicine – your tumour will have its DNA sequenced and based on that the therapy will be tailored for you. The ethical problem (and downside) is that it will be expensive so who pays?

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