• Question: Will there ever be more use of genetic treatment to help reverse cancer?

    Asked by Lilybug005 to David, Eva, Kate, Nicholas, Rachel on 11 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Rachel McMullan

      Rachel McMullan answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      Hi again Lilybug
      Good question. We know more and more about our genes and new ways of sequencing DNA mean that we can now sequence cancers so that we can work out what changes in our DNA have caused the cancer. If we know what causes the type of cancer a person has we can give them a specific drug to treat them.
      There was a big story last week about using gene editing to treat a little girl with leukaemia, you might have seen it. This is brilliant news and I’m sure they’ll be more treatments like this in the future. It’s definitely a very popular area of research right now

    • Photo: David Nunan

      David Nunan answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      Good question.
      We already have some good research for genetic treatments of some cancers like prostate cancer for example. This is a big area of ongoing scientific research and I think more and more breakthroughs for different cancers will continue to be made.

    • Photo: Nicholas Pearce

      Nicholas Pearce answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      I think so – cancer is a disease of the genes, so trying to stop it at a genetic level seems like a great solution. A lot of pharmaceutical companies are looking at gene therapies exactly for this reason.

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