Skip to 0 minutes and 40 seconds Hello and welcome. I’m Dr Momna Hejmadi and I’m the lead educator on this six week course, Inside Cancer. This course is being delivered by myself and fellow researchers here at the University of Bath, and with our consultant oncologists from the Royal United Hospital at Bath. And together, we will explore how some of the basic genetics can influence cancer development and spread. Cancer is a disease that affects about one third of the human population, irrespective of nationality, irrespective of ethnic origins, and the types of cancers that you get also vary considerably. But what all cancers have in common is that they start off as rebel cells, mutant cells, which defy the normal regulations that govern cell behaviour.
Skip to 1 minute and 27 seconds And it is this survival of the nastiest that results in the development of cancer as we know it. This course is a beginners guide. Together, we will explore some of the fundamental differences that dictate behaviour in normal cells, as well as in cancer cells. We will start off first by exploring the concept of DNA mutations and how these changes in the cell’s genome, our DNA, affect how the cell behaves. We will also look at how the cancers trick the human body, both in terms of, let’s say, blood vessels, how they trick tumours to get bigger by stimulating blood vessels growth, or they can stimulate the immune system to bypass them and ultimately, it results in the spread of cancers.
Skip to 2 minutes and 14 seconds What understanding the genetics of cancer enables us researchers to do is rationalise our treatment. So whether it’s conventional treatments, like radiation or chemotherapy, we can refine these, or we can use more sophisticated targeted approaches, targeting specific proteins inside the cell. But there are problems and challenges for both these types of treatments. And together, we will explore in this course what are the key issues that drive cancer research here at Bath. Ultimately, this course is a beginner’s guide to show you how genetics can influence cell behaviour to make them cancerous.
