How your body tries to kill you, and how worms might be able to help

Cells dividing have to copy their DNA. Small errors when DNA is copied pose a cancer risk. With so many cells in our body maybe we should ask not ‘why do we get cancers?’, but ‘why do we not get cancers?’. More cells should mean a slightly increased risk of developing cancer; this is true for taller humans, but large animals like elephants never develop cancer. Why? Elephants seen to have more of a protein called p53; it can detect DNA errors and order cells to repair them or self-destruct. In most human cancers, p53 itself has errors; we look at how, what that leads to, and what we can do.

Developing new medicines is extremely expensive and time-consuming; new approaches are continuously needed to accelerate the process. One approach is to use the microscopic nematode worm, known as C. elegans as a tiny animal to test and discover new drugs. In her talk, Alana will discuss case by case how C. elegans have been used to find new treatments for devastating human diseases.