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Professor Mel Greaves is an eminent cancer biologist and a leading figure in the study of cancer evolution – the Darwinian process by which cancer cells mutate and diversify by natural selection within our tissue ecosystems. One consequence is drug resistance, a major challenge facing cancer researchers in the 21st century, and similar to the challenge posed by antibiotic resistance to researchers of infectious disease.
Cancer medicine has been slow to react to the fundamental principle and impact of cancer evolution: medical training often lacks the study of evolutionary biology and its application to illness.
Professor Greaves came to address questions around how cancer evolution works, if cancer evolution is inevitable and predictable, and how we can thwart the evolutionary resilience of cancer.
Speaker:
Professor Mel Greaves FRS, Director of the Centre for Cancer and Evolution, The Institute of Cancer Research, London