Cancer Research Matters – Complexity and understanding

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 outgoing CRUK Chief Scientist, Professor Karen Vousden. Known for her work on the tumour suppressor protein, p53, she has also worked on HPV and cancer metabolism. She has been the director of the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute in Glasgow, and from 2016 she re-located to become a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute as well as taking up the role of Chief Scientist at CRUK.

She talks about the success and challenges of work around p53, her joy at being involved in the early work around HPV, the frustrations of coming so close to a huge breakthrough and how life as a researcher has changed.

If you’d rather listen on the Acast player, click here

Further reading on Karen’s work on p53:

Article Following the discovery of p53

p53 is strictly controlled in the normal cell, Karen discovered that a key element in this regulation is the protein Mdm2. https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(18)30208-4/fulltext

Karen’s work on oncogenes and HPV: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC402081/