Science behind the scenes: how can we 'see' cancer using bubbles and sound?

An emerging area of interest in the pharmaceutical industry are molecular glues and PROTACs which can act as a novel medicine. Companies are investing lots of money and resources into this area to discover new medicines to drug the undruggable proteins. But what are they? Why are people excited about it? How do they work? All these questions and more will be answered, facilitated by the universally loved medium of LEGO, to help build an idea of what the next big medical breakthrough might be. Have molecular glues got a solid foundation for success or will it all fall apart?

Super-resolution ultrasound is a new type of scan that uses tiny bubbles and sound waves to zoom in on very small blood vessels. These harmless, patient-friendly bubbles are injected into the bloodstream and travel through every vessel, even the tiniest ones! By shining sound waves on the bubbles, the vessels “light up”. This is especially helpful in cancer, where the patterns of blood vessels can tell us a lot about the tumour. For the first time, this scan has been used in participants to track how breast tumours change after radiotherapy.

How can viruses cause cancer? Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are a very common group of viruses that can be simply cleared by the immune system and cause no harm or… completely change how our cells work, and potentially cause cervical, head and neck, and anal cancers. So what causes our bodies to go down the second route? And why do some cancers respond to treatment and others don’t? By learning more about these viruses we can answer these questions and better tailor therapies to improve patient outcomes.