Transcript

Working with cancer patients over the years, some people often ask, “What’s the question you’re asked all the time, Duncan. What do people always want to know right at the beginning of battling the disease?” And the answer usually is, “What is cancer?” If you think about it, makes sense. So cancer is a disease rooted in the human cell that makes cells behave abnormally.

For example, cancer cells divide and multiply faster than they should, driven by growth producing pathways inside the cell. Secondly, most cells have a programed cell death signal, but cancer cells do not. Which makes them basically immortal. And lastly, cancer cells have a unique wanderlust, mean-ing they develop in one part of the anatomy, but travel the bloodstream and colonize in a new location that is called metastasis.

So now that we have some understanding of the what - as in what is cancer - the next question is the “Why.” Why did cancer develop in my cells? Why did I get sick? So the answer to that really lies in something called genetic mutations. And I’ll explain those in a little bit. but it’s enough to know now that in every cell, if you can believe it, there are 25,000 genes, about two thirds of them are called junk genes.

We have them, but we don’t know what they do. but there are some cells that are quite important in the development of cancer. In every cell, there are 25,000 genes. They contain the blueprint for your development as a human down to the color of your eyes. In 1953, two scientists named Crick and Watson discovered that the genes reside within the cell and specifically are found on sort of two inter-twined branches of a tree, which are called chromosomes.

And for that, they won the Nobel Prize. During your lifetime, of course, genes die and are replaced with more or less identical genes. But sometimes there’s a mistake. Sometimes the replication doesn’t work out. And what you end up with is a mutated gene. And that brings us back to the phrase “genetic mutations”. So these are the genes sometimes called oncogenes that many scientists see as the primary cause of many cancers. They’re the driving force in change in cells, basic characteristics such that it becomes cancerous. 

By the way, since I’ve mentioned cells that can be cancerous, just a word about cells. Did you know that we have 30 trillion cells in our body? Just think of that. 30 trillion cells. And in every cell just about, there’s DNA. And it’s those cells that can become cancerous. Not a trillion, not even a bunch of million. But it just takes a few to get you started down the wrong pathway. 

So in speaking with cancer patients, another question I’m often asked is, “What are the recent break-throughs, the big discoveries that might give me a better chance of survival and others a better chance of survival?” One answer certainly is known as genetic sequencing. Big word genetic se-quencing. That process can be influential in deciding upon the best treatment for cancer patient. And so it’s usually part of the diagnostic phase. I’m always amazed when someone says, well, you know, the doctors diagnosed everything. We’re ready for medicine. And I’m like, have your genes been se-quenced? And they go, no, he didn’t mention that. It’s very important.

Sequencing suggests that something’s being placed in the proper order. As it turns out, our genes, all 25,000 each, have a place, a designated spot in our chromosomes. Recall that the chromosomes are those branches of a tree with genes perched like birds on a wire. If genes could speak, you could imagine that one of them might say to another, “hey, you’re in the wrong spot. You’re supposed to be perched eight slots further away. Get out of here.” And, and so the genes eventually get where they belong. 

Once science figured out that there were about 25,000 genes in every cell and where they perch on the chromosome arms, it was time to figure out which genes were the real troublemakers. These are the genes that kept showing up as scientists looked at cells under a microscope.

And these are, as you might imagine, our friends, the oncogenes. The project took plenty of time and effort, but eventually science identified these are genes. The troublemakers, they’re not a lot of them, but they’re very, very important to understanding cancer. And that effort, which is generally called the Human Genome Project, took 13 years from early 1990 to 2003, and is an example of what they call big science, which is when the private sector and the public sector cooperate with hundreds, if not thousands of scientists.

And the only three, I guess, will recognize examples of big science are the Human Genome Project, a man on the moon and the atom bomb.