February 2009 podcast transcript

00:00

Kat: In this month's podcast we'll be finding out how tiny fruit flies are providing scientists with key clues to cancer, and how you can help us by sharing your story.

Coming up later, singer Liz McClarnon talks about Race for Life, and how she's getting involved this year. But first, here's the news with Josephine Querido.

00:56

Josephine: A new study funded by Cancer Research UK has shown that chemotherapy after surgery can reduce the risk of dying from pancreatic cancer by around 30 per cent. At the moment, survival rates from the disease are very low, so this is small but significant progress.

Led by Professor John Neoptolemos at the University of Liverpool, the scientists pooled results from three international clinical trials of pancreatic cancer. The results show that if a patient's cancer is suitable for surgery, adding chemotherapy can add precious months or even years of life.

Cancer Research UK has committed to increasing research into pancreatic cancer over the next five years, with the aim of improving survival from the disease, so this news is a step in the right direction.

And finally, do you have a great fundraising idea that could help us raise money to fund more research like this? If so, then the Open Ventures Challenge is for you. We're looking for ideas that will make a difference, whether they're business ventures with a fundraising angle, or new ideas for fundraising activities or events that the charity can run.

To find out more, visit OVC.mo.jo You can also vote on other people's ideas on the website, and there's over 70 already up there.

Kat: And if you want find out more about these stories, or get the latest from the charity's scientists, and researchers around the world, then have a look at our News & Resources website. And you can keep up to date with the latest news on our Science Update blog.

03:35

Kat: Singer Liz McClarnon is best known for being in the band Atomic Kitten, but this year she's taken on a different creative challenge - designing a T-shirt for Race for Life, our annual series of 5 kilometre women-only running events.

I caught up with her to find out more about her shirt, and how she feels about the event.

""This is my Cancer Research UK 2009 Race for Life T-shirt - I designed it and it's the only one this year, so I'm so happy! It's all in pink, the Race for Life colours, it's got lots of flowers and they're all entwined and lots of different shapes and sizes, to show how lots of very different women get together for Race for Life and take part.

We're separate entities, but we're all together at this point, so that's what I wanted to do. It's very busy and full-on, and it's a happy T-shirt too. I think it's something that people will buy even if they don't know it's for Race for Life.

I did Race for life in 2008 and it was phenomenal. I did it with a friend of mine called Jamie Jo, we raised money together. It was really hard doing it, but not to sound cheesy, it was so emotional doing it with all these women. We all had names on us of the people we were running for. I was running for Pauline Gill, one of my auntie's sisters who died of cancer, and I just saw the way it tore the family apart - people couldn't get to grips with it.

So when the guys here [at Cancer Research UK] approached me, I was just so pleased to be a part of it. And everyone came up and said "who are you running for? How does it make you feel?" and we all felt like mates, but we didn't know each other. It was fabulous.

On the start line I was full of enthusiasm and really excited - I was like "Come on, we're gonna do this!" I was at the front and thought I'd finish at the front , and then I was looking for the 1K mark - I thought surely we must be halfway round by now - and then it came and it was only 1K!. I'm not joking, I probably jogged slowly for about 3K and for the last 2 I went for it. I'd never done anything like that before - I'm a sprinter if anything - I don't like long distance at all. But I'm really proud of myself and I can't wait to do it this year.

Cancer Research UK is a huge organisation, and just to be associated with it is an honour for me. I want to stand strong - this is a serious disease, one in three people have it at some point in their life, and I just jumped at the chance. I'll definitely be doing Race for Life this time round. I'll be wearing my T-shirt, jogging along. Maybe I'll go a bit faster this time - maybe do some training for it!"

Kat: We'd like to invite you to take part in Race for Life this year - it's for ladies only though, sorry guys. There are events all over the UK, and you can enter online now.

07:24

Kat: Our reporter Anna Lacey went to Cancer Research UK's laboratories at the London Research Institute, and spoke to Nic Tapon - the group leader for the Apoptosis and Proliferation Control Lab. He is using fruit flies to work out how our cells know when to stop growing, and is hoping to use this information to help control cancer.

Nic Tapon package

"So when you start out your life as an embryo, you're very small. And when you become an adult you're very large. And so in that time, all of the cells that make up your body undergo a huge number of divisions. They grow and divide very rapidly, but that has to be controlled. All of the cells are instructed when to stop dividing so that you're the size of a human, and not the size of an elephant.

And the same goes for the adult. Some of your cells still have the potential to divide, to replace damaged cells in the body, so these cells have to be told all the time to not divide, to stop them from dividing inappropriately."

If the cells mutate and stop doing as they're told, then they can form a tumour. This means that to understand cancer, we have to know about the control of cell growth. But how can cells possibly know that they've made our organs the right size and shape?

"That problem of how tissue size is limited is very relevant to cancer - it's at the heart of the disease. In my lab we're geneticists, and we're using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model system in which to study the way that tissues and organs are regulated.

Fruit flies are a very useful model. The behaviour of your cells is encoded in the "book of life" - the DNA. And the DNA is a very long molecule with an alphabet code inside it, and the words in the alphabet code decide or dictate how your cells behave - whether they divide or stop dividing, whether they become a hair cell and a skin cell.

To study the changes in the code of life that promote cancer is extremely slow to do in humans - it takes years for a human to generate. With the flies, they are very quick. You can get a new fly from an embryo in ten days, and therefore we can study the very complex patterns of inheritance of genes very easily in the fruit fly, which we be unable to do in humans."

But it's not just rapid reproduction that makes fruit flies so good for cancer genetics.

"They are remarkably related at the genetic level to humans and other animals. In fact it's been shown not just for cancer but for all diseases put together, about three quarters of the genes that are known to cause these diseases when mutated are equivalent in the fly genome, which fulfil completely identical functions."

"...This is an incubator. Flies like it quite hot - they like it nice and comfy at 25 degrees..."

"We've discovered one of these signals that we were looking for that tells cells when to stop dividing. So if we disrupt the signal through a mutation, the cells over-proliferate and we get the fly equivalent of tumours. And we're starting to understand much better how that signalling is transmitted, and how it changes the behaviour of the cells at a high level of resolution.

All of these genes we're working on have two potential applications. The first is as potential diagnostic targets. So if we can detect mutations or changes in these genes, then we'll be able to tell if someone had a tumour in the first place, and what type of tumour they have. So early diagnosis is one of the main challenges in cancer - you have to get to the main tumour in time to treat it successfully.

The second application is as targets for drugs. These genes that we study can potentially be modified by drugs, and hopefully to rectify the problem in the cells and make it stop proliferating. So both diagnostics and drug targets is what we're hoping to get out of our efforts."

13:05

Kat: Survival rates for cancer have improved significantly over recent years, and more and more people are surviving the disease, with their own story to tell about their experiences. Here at Cancer Research UK we're always keen to hear people's stories.

I spoke to Abby Lenehan, our Patient Liaison Officer, to find out why this is so important, and how we use them.

"It's invaluable in helping us illustrate the scientific research that's going on. So if there is a research breakthrough, although it can grab headlines in a newspaper, nothing compares to actually having somebody say "well this is going to help me this way", just to illustrate how that's going to benefit people's lives.

Also people who've just been diagnosed may be feeling quite alone and scared, and if they read the story of someone who's beaten cancer, it may give them hope and help them realise they're not facing it alone.

It's also really useful in raising awareness of symptoms of different cancers. So somebody reading a story of someone for example whose mole might have changed appearance or changed size might just feel encouraged to check on their moles and be aware of the signs of skin cancer.

Or if someone has found a lump in their breast, and if that's in somebody's story that they're reading, then that may also make people realise how important it is to be breast aware.

Initially [when someone shares their story with us] we would have quite a long phone conversation with them, just going through exactly what their experience was, from their symptoms through to diagnosis, what treatment they had - just trying to build up that rapport, that relationship.

We'd explain to them the kinds of things that they might want to get involved with, and if they did want to be splashed over the national newspaper front pages then that's fantastic. But equally, lots of people don't, and there are a number of things they can do just within the charity. They could feature on a website, go in some marketing materials, speak at an event.

Everybody's different, and if somebody does share their story with us, we're not suddenly going to give them up to as many journalists as we can - each request we think they might be suitable for, we would call them, explain exactly what that specific request is, and ask for their permission.

And we'd make it very clear that if they didn't want to, or if they were going to be on holiday that day, if they were too busy or if they didn't feel up to it they can always say no and that's fine.

We're always looking for anybody who's had any kind of cancer experience who's happy to share their story. But obviously with the SunSmart campaign launching in April, we are on quite a big drive at the moment to try and find people who are happy to share their experience of malignant melanoma, in particular, but also any skin cancer.

To get in touch go to the main Cancer Research UK website - look for " Share your story". There's an online form with questions and drop-down boxes to fill in, and that gets automatically emailed to me. People can also just email me direct at mystory@cancer.org.uk"

16:52

Kat: We've reached the end once more so we hope you've enjoyed this month's podcast. You can keep up to date with all the latest progress in research from our Science Update blog. And please let us know what you think of this podcast by leaving feedback on the blog, or emailing your comments to podcast@cancer.org.uk.

We'll be back next month with all the latest news from Cancer Research UK, so until then, goodbye!

• Credits:
• Presented and produced by Kat Arney
• News by Josephone Querido and Kat Arney
• Nic Tapon package by Anna Lacey
• Original music written and performed by Kat Arney and Henry Scowcroft
• With special thanks to all the participants