Question: What have you found out during research on Cancer?

Vicky Forster answered on 10 Nov 2013:

Good question! I research one particular type of cancer called leukaemia, which is a cancer of the blood. Normally your blood is made up of lots of different types of blood cells, for example red blood cells, which carry oxygen, and lots of different types of white blood cells which fight infections, or even control if you are allergic to something. In leukaemia, the bone marrow (a factory in your big bones where all of your blood is made) starts producing too much of one type of cell, which makes someone with leukaemia feel very unwell. This is normally mainly because they don’t have enough red blood cells to get oxygen around their body as quickly as they need it. Scientists and doctors know quite a lot about why leukaemia makes people ill, and we even know a fair amount about how to treat it using chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants. However we don’t know much about why leukaemia starts in the first place – my research is looking at this.

All types of cancer are caused by problems with DNA called mutations – i look at some of these mutations we only see in leukaemias. So far ive found that a blood cell needs many different mutations before it will become damaged enough to turn into a leukaemia cell. Myself and other scientists can now hopefully use this information to come up with better ways of treating people with leukaemia, or possibly even try to stop it happening in the first place (like we do with vaccines and some infectious diseases).