Question: Hi. Why do goldfish have such short memory?

Andrew Devitt answered on 19 Jun 2013:

So this is right up my street. great question. Both methods of therapy are trying to induce death in the cancer cells. They can do it in different ways but they result in the cancer cell being stressed so that it dies….but it dies by a particular type of death called ‘apoptosis’. Essentially the cancer cell commits suicide and is eaten by healthy normal cells.

This is great because cells dying by this method don’t cause any great big alarm bells to be rung. The dying cells just melt quietly away.

The biggest problem is that many cancer cells then change (evolve) to avoid cell death. This means you often have to use alternative therapeutic agents. They are sneaky little devils those cancer cells and they are constantly evolving.

The best bit of news though is that cancer cells are never completely resistant to death…..we just need to work out how to trigger the cells to die.