Question: how are you planning to try and kill cancer cells?

Alexis Barr answered on 16 Jun 2013:

We have a few ideas!
One idea is that a lot of cancer cells have too many copies of some genes. You should have two copies of all genes – one from your mother, one from your father. In cancer, mutations to DNA in cells mean that cells might have more than two copies of some genes. This means the cancer cell will make too much protein from that gene. We can then try and design drugs that bind to the extra protein and stop it working which will kill the cell. One drug that works like this is called Herceptin that is used to treat Breast Cancer. We need more though for other types of cancer.
Another idea is based on the fact that some cancer cells have to go through extra steps to finish mitosis compared to healthy normal cells. For example, on my profile page, that cancer cell that is going through mitosis but isn’t symmetrical will have problems if it tries to divide into 3 because each of the new cells won’t have enough DNA to survive. So what the cancer cell does is try to form a symmetrical structure and divide into two. Normal cells don’t have to do this as they form a symmetrical structure straight away. So if we can stop the cancer cell changing from the 3 way structure to a symmetrical structure we can force it to divide into 3 cells and they will die.