What’s cancer got to do with crabs, artist Jackson Pollock, and artificial intelligence? It’s not a riddle; these are some of the things we’ll explore with surgeon Grant Stewart, computer scientist Mateja Jamnik and radiologist Evis Sala from the Mark Foundation Institute for Integrated Cancer Medicine.

In this episode, we’ll discover how artificial intelligence is making it easier for doctors to diagnose and treat cancer and we’ll share some cancer facts that are both amazing and disturbing. We also learn about the WIRE clinical trial for kidney cancer. WIRE evaluates the effectiveness of giving a short course of drug treatment to patients in the one-month “window of opportunity” between diagnosis and surgery. Patients on the WIRE trial also undergo a suite of new imaging techniques that have been brought together for the first time globally in this clinical trial.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, Naomi Clements-Brod and Annie Thwaite. 


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Cancer and artificial intelligence

What if a time machine could be built, not from metal but from human tissue, to help us understand cancer and how it responds to treatment?

Dr Alecia-Jane Twigger, Dr Akanksha Anand, Dr Kui Hua, Dr Pedro Victori and Dr Jo Worley from the University of Cambridge have done just that. In this episode, they talk about their project funded by Wellcome LEAP under the Delta Tissue programme to build a 'tissue time machine'. By studying tumour samples from patients with triple negative breast cancer before and after treatment, they aim to build a model that can predict how patients would respond to therapy.

The conversation offers a fascinating look at how a truly multidisciplinary team, bringing together scientists from very different fields, can achieve something remarkable.

Integrated Cancer Medicine: Research in Focus

Building a tissue time machine

The Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre unites over 1,000 world-leading biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, clinicians, nurses and allied healthcare professionals from across Cambridge, UK to tackle cancer from every angle.

Our mission is to end death and disease caused by cancer through research, treatment and education. We are detecting cancer at its earliest stage and are developing personalised treatments for every patient through facilitating new collaborations and driving the translation of new scientific discoveries into clinical applications to improve patient care. By working together across a range of different disciplines, our members are breaking down the barriers between the laboratory and the clinic, enabling patients to benefit from the latest innovations in cancer science.

Building a tissue time machine

Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre

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