The Evolution of Cancer Therapy

Professor Eleanor Stride will discuss the history and development of cancer therapy from its origins in Ancient Egypt - when surgery was the only option to remove a tumour, to the more recent developments of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She will end by looking at present-day clinical trials that aim to harness the body’s own immune system to eliminate disease (immunotherapy).

A lecture by Eleanor Stride

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

[zelenskyyhung]

A marvelous lecture. It is extremely instructive and informative. Thanks professor stride.

[nazammushtaq]

Please donate generously to cancer research charities

[loolylooly]

Excellent lecture, successfully balanced both history and science 🌸🌹🌺

[kathymartin]

Well rounded lecture. Happy to hear mention of diet and exercise, alcohol consumption.

[annoloki]

The microbiome story is extremely complex, because we're talking about a whole ecology, but we can get some hints by looking to our evolutionary story. For example, other mammals can produce their own vitamin C, but our ancestors lost the ability millions of years ago when the gene became damaged. Normally, the damage to the gene would have meant certain death, but we were already getting enough of it from our diet, so it wasn't a problem... and maybe beneficial, if you get enough of something in your food, why waste other resources making more? So, you can expand that process out to include the substances produced by our gut bacteria, you can imagine plenty of ways we can evolve to rely on these substances. Some studies seem to indicate that even our desire to interact with each other socially has been increased by gut bacteria, by increasing blood oxytocin levels, increasing the chance that the bacteria could spread to new hosts that socially interact. Removing these bacteria increases risks of things like autism, as the brain doesn't receive the rewards for social interaction fundamentals, like eye contact etc, that oxytocin encourages. Other bacteria have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects that effect childhood survival of respiratory infections. Without this being present, we likely would have had to evolve our own way to defend against these infections, but the evolution took place in the bacteria first, removing our need for it. Disrupting the bacteria has the same effect as removing its metabolites from our diet... so, we have to study these metabolites to understand what they should be, to see what might be missing in people without them. We also need to be more careful with antibiotics, as these put a finger on the scale for any non-bacterial elements of our microbiome, such as fungus, which if they become too dominant, can stop the bacteria from properly recovering through their own anti-bacterial products (conditions like "candida overgrowth")

[MaryLove-dw]

That was really interesting and great to go way back to ancient ancestors, to understand you really need to go back as far as documentation takes you and how far we have come in curing cancer. I’m a cancer survivor so I found it really fascinating. 👍

[emerald_eyes]

There is also antiangiogenic therapy, which cuts off the blood supply to cancer cells. Its working principle is similar to that of Sidney Farber's idea.

[Finn_sisjon]

My father died in cancer when he was 29💔

[Shootsmith]

Great presentation. However unfortunate mic placement… seems to not only pick up her voice well but also her deep breathing and clicker!

[TommyDobi]

Very useful and I'm grateful for the upload but 20% of the lecture is this lady's inhaling..