João Pedro de Magalhães studies some of the longest lived animals in the world, like the bowhead whale which can live for 200 years, to understand how we can improve human ageing.
All tagged cancer
Doug Williams: Taming the toxicity of cancer drugs
By targeting drugs directly to tumours, exosome therapies can reduce side effects from cancer treatment
Does cancer care about sex?
Presenter Kat Arney tells the story of how biomathematician Kristin Swanson discovered that cancer cells with XX chromosomes behave differently to cancer cells with XY chromosomes.
Why don’t elephants get cancer? The curious case of TP53
A family trip to the zoo led Josh Schiffman to uncover the reason why elephants hardly ever develop cancer
Sam Behjati: The placenta is a genetic dumpster fire
Sam and his colleagues have discovered that the placenta is packed with genetic mutations, many of which are found in cancer.
“Blood is an unusual fluid”: The therapeutic antibody revolution
The story of how researchers figured out how to recreate the most complex yet powerful proteins in the human immune system - antibodies - and use them for treating disease.
Go big or go home
From giant dinosaurs and blue whales to oversized capybaras, some animals are built on a bigger scale. But how have they evolved to be so huge?
The Story of HeLa and Henrietta Lacks
Growing cells in the lab isn’t as easy as you might think. We explore the story of how Henrietta Lacks’s immortal cells (known today as HeLa cells) became the go-to human cell line for biomedical research, and the impact they’ve had as a result.
Fusion genes and cancer cures: The story of the Philadelphia Chromosome
We tell the story of the ‘Philadelphia chromosome’ (a key cause of chronic myeloid leukaemia), how it was discovered and how it’s discovery influenced the search for a cure.
The seamstress and the scientist: Pauline Gross and Family G
A chance encounter between a seamstress and a scientist starts a 25-year long crusade to understand the nature of hereditary cancer.
Storm-driven: Maud Slye and her dancing mice
Maud Slye was one of the first people to investigate how cancer susceptibility could be inherited, with the help of 150,000 mice.