The Secret Life of Cancer Cells

Your body is constantly scanning for danger—even before you feel anything is wrong. But how does it recognise when a hidden threat, like a cancer cell, begins to grow? In this talk, we’ll explore the fascinating ways your immune system detects and responds to abnormal cells, how this system can be outsmarted or overwhelmed by cancer, and what happens when it fails. We’ll also look at how scientists are developing innovative new therapies that help retrain and boost the immune system to spot cancer more quickly, respond more powerfully, and improve the body’s chances of winning the fight.

DNA is essential for life, acting like an instruction manual that tells cells how to function and grow. In healthy cells, it is neatly packaged into threadlike structures called chromosomes. However, in cancer, DNA can also exist as extrachromosomal DNAs (ecDNAs), which can instruct cells to behave abnormally, multiply rapidly and achieve an immortal state. Since their discovery in the 1960s, ecDNAs have gained attention in cancer research. Despite making cancer more aggressive, they may also be its Achilles' heel—offering a potential target to treat this deadly disease.

Cancer happens when the instructions that tell our cells how to grow and divide go wrong. Some of these instructions – genes - make cells grow too fast, while others fail to stop them. In this talk, we’ll explore how these mistakes happen—whether by chance, through our environment, or inherited from our families—and why treating cancer is so difficult. Join us for an accessible and engaging talk into the genetics of cancer!