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Most people are aware of the staggering stats about cancer, but do you know how scientists in Cardiff are developing exciting new cancer treatments?Tonight, you’ll find out how their research is helping to target cancer cells without harming healthy ones. You will also learn why viruses aren’t always the bad guys and how they can become our allies to infect cancer cells and deliver drugs. This night is kindly sponsored by Cancer Research UK.
Curing The C Word: Educate, Aim and Shoot Your Cells
Professor Arwyn Tomos Jones
(Professor of Membrane Traffic and Drug Delivery, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences)
Curing cancer, in most parts, is based on a strategy designed to kill our own cells. This is because the hallmarks of a cancer cell is that is one of us and not some invader such as a bacteria and virus. This is a major problem in tackling this disease. How do we learn about how cancer cell survive? How do we find tiny signals that make our cancer cells different to our normal cells? How can we get drugs inside only cancer cells? Here I will talk about how research is trying to find the answers.
How to train your oncolytic virus
Dr Alan Parker
(Senior Lecturer School of Medicine)
Viruses are just like dragons. Like dragons, in their “wild type” (disease causing) form they cause destruction, ailment and even mortality. But, just like in the film “How to train your Dragon”, it is possible to train viruses to do great good. In this talk, I will explain how my lab are learning in great detail about viruses, how they infect healthy cells, and using this information to reprogramme them so that they seek out and destroy cancer cells, rather than cause disease.
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