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

In this episode of Joining the Dots we explore the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration group and their approach to developing new technologies for hard-to-treat cancers. 

The EPSRC Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) in Targeted Delivery for Hard-to-Treat Cancers aims to develop new technologies to effectively deliver drugs for the treatment of three hard-to-treat cancers: in the pancreas, brain, and chest.

The guests for this podcast are two of the IRC investigators: Professor Colin Watts, Chair and Professor of Neurosurgery at the Brain Cancer Programme at the University of Birmingham, and Dr Ronan Daly, Associate Professor in the Science and Technology of Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing.

Listen on to hear Colin and Ronan talk about how manufacturing research is helping to overcome the challenges of delivering effective cancer treatments and the opportunities to use the same technologies for other diseases or conditions.

The overarching aim of the IRC is to develop and validate high-capacity vehicles, injectable gels, and implantable devices to better target hard-to-treat cancers, enhancing treatment efficacy by increasing the rate and extent of drug activity at the tumour site. The programme has been designed to facilitate effective translation from the laboratory to the clinic by incorporating cross-cutting validation and manufacturing themes across all the technologies.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Professor Colin Watts
Professor of Neurosurgery, Chair Birmingham Brain Cancer Programme, University of Birmingham
Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon, University Hospitals Birmingham 

Colin leads the newly established Brain Cancer Programme at the University of Birmingham. His research aims to improve the treatment and survival of patients with glioma by understanding the molecular genetic heterogeneity of individual tumours and using that data to develop novel molecular and functional stratification suitable for application in clinical trials. His clinical practice specializes in neurosurgical oncology with a particular interest in intrinsic gliomas and cerebral metastases.

Dr Ronan Daly
Associate Professor, Science and Technology of Manufacturing, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge

Ronan is a Course Director for the Manufacturing Engineering course, where students learn about manufacturing technologies and manufacturing management. He previously worked in Unilever R&D before completing a PhD in Chemistry from the School of Chemistry and Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices at Trinity College Dublin. He leads the Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing research group at the IfM, which tackles fluid flow and functional material challenges to enable scale-up of advanced manufacturing technologies.

Targeting hard-to-treat cancers, with EPSRC's Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration

In this week's episode, Professor Florian Markowetz talks about his work and recent publication on chromosomal instability. Chromosomal instability is a dynamic process of DNA change, which leads to some DNA being present multiple times and some being lost altogether. Some cancers are dominated by this process of genomic disruption; ovarian, pancreatic and triple-negative breast cancer for example. These chaotic DNA changes mean that there are not good biomarkers present to guide treatment decisions. Florian's laboratory has found a structure underlying chromosomal instability and has identified genomic fingerprints which enable them to read out the fundamental reasons for the DNA changes.

Florian is a group leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Integrated Cancer Medicine: Research in Focus

Chromosomal instability

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.

Chromosomal instability

Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre

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