The big cure for the big ‘C’

This time I'm not going to make any promises. I'm going to try and keep this place going better than I have done but I may get distracted again. There's a lot of fun stuff ahead, but it should mean you'll get to see me cropping up in other places very soon. In other news, if you didn't see it, I got a post on the Nature.com network on Monday which I'm very excited about. It's on the theme of new beginnings and organising my first conference.

I'd also like to say a quick hello to some of my readers that I've had the good fortune to meet around Cambridge since I last posted anything. I'm always surprised that people have actually heard of my ramblings and am glad that I'm not talking to myself here (although after so much inactivity that may have changed :S )

Anyway, people are always asking me if I've cured cancer yet. This is one of the things that my lab and many others are working towards, in a roundabout sense. But it seems likely that there will never be one cure for all cancer and here's why:

At the risk of being cliché, given all the recent media activity (which I have spectacularly missed the opportunity to write about), finding the ‘cure for cancer’ is to biology what the Higgs Boson was to particle physics. Everyone’s working on it and it means a lot – not just to our understanding of the universe, but to human healthcare – and it may not even exist.

People like to think there can be a simple pill that will fix any problem in life from cancer to cellulite, obesity to osteoarthritis (source).

It’s very nice and easy to think of one simple, easy to administer cure – this is the ultimate dream for many illnesses – but most diseases just aren’t that simple, in particular a ‘cure for cancer’ is a very misleading concept.  It suggests that cancer is one illness that is the same every time it occurs and therefore should have the same solution each time. Actually, there are probably as many cancers as there are people with cancer, with each one unique and different to any other, to some extent.

tMoL: Big Cell, Little Cell

I’m writing this as a homage to one of my closest friends on the blogosphere. The every wonderful LabRat has finally ended her fraught relationship with scientific research and is throwing herself wholeheartedly into science writing. Whilst I am hugely envious, I wish her all the best and hope she will remember me when she is rich and famous. Look out for her in future publications.

By way of background; Lab Rat has always had a fixation with the simpler things in life, by which I mean bacteria.

False colour E. coli, bacterial/prokaryotic cells.

All living organisms are made up of cells individual living units which are relatively self-supporting and capable of total self-replication, although this is complicated by the intricate interactions between different cells in larger organisms. Whilst larger creatures, like humans are made up of billions of cells, the vast majority of life on Earth exists as single celled microorganisms that cannot be observed with the naked eye.

Cells fall into two main groups, larger and more complex organisms, plants, animals and fungi are called eukaryotes (that’s us humans too) and have much more intricate cellular structures. The earliest forms of life, with the simplest cells are called prokaryotes, which include bacteria.

SOS: Save our Science - Drink Hearty Lads (and Ladies)

Hi Everyone. Hope there's still people out there reading this. Would be great to hear from you. Sorry things have been a bit slow, there's a lot going on this term, which I hope to write about (in part) soon. This new rotation is really fun, although quite long hours, and I've got loads of other projects going on relating to Science Communication, as many of you may already be aware. It means I'm not getting much time to sit and write articles on here though. I will be working hard to try and get back to ClearSci as much as possible, so hopefully more will be going on around here.


Anyway, so here's a fun story that is an issue I've been looking forward to having a go at. Everyone always has some new story about how alcohol is good for you or bad for you, and usually it depends on what you measure and whether it's the alcohol itself or something else (e.g. tannins in red wine) which is helping you out. This latest is cool because it pulls together a lot of research from the last 30 years, and actually finds some benefits, in certain instances, but also points out the importance of moderation. Enjoy. :)


This is a debate that I find quite interesting, especially since everyone seems to be more than a little biased in their desired outcome. It is the endless search for positive effects of drinking alcohol. A new meta-analysis (re-examination of lots of old data from different studies) of alcohol research may finally be able to put part of this issue to rest.

SOS: Save our Science - Bug Battle

This post was a request from a reader (Yay!). I've got a lot of different projects going on at the moment so have been a bit slow with the posting. Hopefully I'll be posting about my latest lab soon. There's still a lot to write when I get the time. We had a lot of fun last week meeting the students interviewing to join my course next year and the lab work is going well. There is a much more theoretical element to it, which I've been enjoying. Anyway, so this is a bit of a proto-story really. A possible explanation for the disappearance of bees worldwide; though the real science is still under wraps.

A honeybee (Apis mellifera) (source)

Pollinating insects, like bees, are disappearing across the world. The phenomenon is known as colony collapse disorder (CCD). If CCD continues as it is the world stands to lose most, if not all, pollinating species, which stands to rapidly wipe out all flowering plant species and would severely alter every land based ecosystem. A key element in understanding CCD was uncovered over two years ago, but is only just emerging as published work.

CCD is being studied by a dedicated group of researchers in the US Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Lab. The rapid decline in colonies of pollinating insects due to CCD was originally observed in the US but has since been identified around the globe, though it has yet to arrive in some countries, including the UK.

SOS: Save our Science - Preventing Pandemic

Hey! I've been busy finishing my first project and after some last minute panicking it's all over and I'm moving on from chickens to yeast, but before I do I wanted to share this new story. A breakthrough in preventing the spread of Bird Flu, that has applications in protecting against a wide range of other viruses. This is the sort of story I've been looking forward to writing for a while, I hope you'll see why.


A group of researchers may have found a way to prevent the spread of bird flu through domestic populations, a revolution which could significantly reduce the risk of humans becoming infected. Not only that, but this technique could be easily used to protect against any viral infection in almost any species. It could even eventually be used to protect ourselves. This method requires no vaccinations and provides life-long protection from a broad range of different avian flu strains.

SOS: Save our Science - Save our Salmon

This is a story that's been going for a long while. The concerns over the effects of fish farming on wild fish populations. Also it's nice to take the science outside for a change. This new research is quite interesting and was well reported. Although the actual findings still need a lot of work.

A sudden population crash in wild salmon during 2002 caused mass panic for the authorities in Canada. This coincided with closer monitoring of farmed salmon, and resulted in the blame being placed on parasites transferred from farmed fish. The phenomenon has drawn the attention of many researchers and a new study appears to show that although there is transfer of parasitic sea lice between farmed and wild salmon it cannot be responsible for the decline in population.