I don’t actually work on cancer, but I believe it is a very difficult thing to research as there are many different types. Even within specific cancer types, different patients can respond differently to drugs – for example, a treatment that may be very effective in treating one breast cancer patient may not have any effect on another breast cancer patient. This is true of many diseases, but is a fairly common problem in cancer treatment.
However, there is a huge amount of amazing research ongoing in the development of cancer treatments, and scientists are making life-changing discoveries in this area all the time!
I agree with Robyn here – great answer!
Cancer is indeed not one disease, but cancer on each place in the body is different, and also between patients it can be slightly different. And within one tumour, there are not only the cancer cells, but also other cells, like immune cells, so as a cancer scientist you are not even studying only one cell type!
Therefore, a cancer scientist will often pick one type of cancer, and one or two cell types to study within that cancer type. Narrowing your research down to one piece, will help you discriminate between cancers, and the cells involved. All these pieces together from different scientists, will then hopefully be enough to make the whole puzzle.
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Lotte commented on :
I agree with Robyn here – great answer!
Cancer is indeed not one disease, but cancer on each place in the body is different, and also between patients it can be slightly different. And within one tumour, there are not only the cancer cells, but also other cells, like immune cells, so as a cancer scientist you are not even studying only one cell type!
Therefore, a cancer scientist will often pick one type of cancer, and one or two cell types to study within that cancer type. Narrowing your research down to one piece, will help you discriminate between cancers, and the cells involved. All these pieces together from different scientists, will then hopefully be enough to make the whole puzzle.