How to understand Cancer today? Problems and Promises of Cancer Research

The talk will provide basic definition of what cancer. You will learn that
cancer is a complex disease that is not necessarily always as bad as you think.

Moreover, the talk will guide you through the major milestones in cancer
research that have led to a better understanding of the disease and provided
increasingly more effective methods for its treatment

Each of us has a unique, individual genome, even “identical” twins. In cancer, a lesion of 1cm3 in size, comprises about a billion cells with all of them displaying unique genomes - within a genetically unique organism. Which mechanisms are driving this process and importantly, how, if at all, can we handle a disease of excessive individuality, if this individuality is combined with a program of selfishness? And equally important, how can we expect that therapies will work in more than one individual patient? I will touch on these questions and try to explain why scientific progress appears slow, but actually isn’t.

Every day thousands of cancer cells leave the primary tumor and take up the journey to distant sites to give rise to what is called a metastasis. The development of metastasis usually leads to organ failure and ultimately patient death. Fortunately not every patient develops metastasis. But why? Let´s find out together!