My roommate Vanessa and I are working in the same department: Pharmacology and Cancer Biology. It’s nice to know that I have at least one person to complain to about Westerns that can actually empathize. She’s studying the actions of CYR-61 in cancer, I’m studying the role of ABL kinases in cancer. Our projects are similar in that we’re doing very broad-spectrum work, struggling to piece together any stray pieces of evidence we might gather in order to understand the role of these proteins in tumorigenesis. We’ve been told that these proteins are important, and now we have to figure out why. It’s a daunting task, to say the least. In listening to Vanessa’s talk I realized that there are probably thousands of people around the world pursuing similar pipe dreams, chasing down information about a specific protein that we’re sure is consequential in some way.
People talk about a “cure for cancer” like it’s one disease, and if we just pour enough money into it, we’ll eventually find a magic drug that makes it disappear. The truth is even more depressing than it is complicated. Cancer is tissue-specific, meaning that different cancers develop in different organs, and even in different parts of organs. The cell is home to countless intertwined signaling networks, each of which might be altered if even one mutation occurs during DNA replication, transcription, or translation. Tumors are not just the result of replication gone awry; they are really like organs in themselves. They must survive, grow, recruit vasculature, invade surrounding tissues, and eventually metastasize.
This means that neither Vanessa or I are going to find the “cure for cancer.” What we are doing, however, is adding a teeny tiny piece to the massive, hideously complicated puzzle. That’s all anyone in cancer research can do, and with enough of us doing it, we just might find a cure develop targeted therapies for cancers in a variety of tissues.
