Cancer Research Matters – Microenvironments and early detection

Cancer Research Matters provokes conversation around cancer science, how it shapes our understanding of the disease and the challenges we face as we develop therapies.

The first series focusses on the 20^th anniversary of CRUK – we’ll be winding back the clock on some of the great discoveries and breakthroughs made in the past two decades and asking some leading names where they think we’ll be in another 20 years.

This episode features Professor Sara Zanivan. Sara is based at the Beatson Institute for Cancer where she uses a number proteomics approaches to explore the tumour microenvironment. Her lab also applies their proteomics expertise and capability to develop early detection approaches. Specifically, she is interested in utilising mass-spectrometry to examine how large proteomic changes could be used in the clinic.

She talks about how understanding the tumour microenvironment has developed over the past 20 years, how the techniques of proteomics have really freed researchers to ask the important questions and why we could even see mass-spec proteomics in the clinic.

If you’d rather listen via the podcast site – click here

Further reading on mass-spectrometry and proteomics:

Journal paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01511

Article:
https://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article/42/5/64/226371/A-beginner-s-guide-to-mass-spectrometry-based

What do you think about the balance between how we study proteomics and genomics? We’d love to hear your thoughts – please do leave a comment below.