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Asked by to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 12 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by cupcake94, icecream19, cherry16.
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Matthew Lam answered on 12 Mar 2014:
Scientists use information from the past all the time to make new discoveries.
For example, if we want to know what genes get mutated to cause cancer, we could look at the DNA of a person taken before they had cancer and compare it to DNA taken from that person’s tumour. We could then play ‘spot the difference’ and look for the genes that have changed in the cancer DNA, which could tell us something new about how that cancer started.
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Anastasia Wass answered on 12 Mar 2014:
Scientists are always using work done in the past and finding new ways to develop it and help find treatments for cancer.
Any cells can mutate and become cancerous so yes you can get cancer anywhere in the body. Some cancers are more common than others though. For example skin cancer is more common than liver cancer.
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Andrea Hanvey answered on 12 Mar 2014:
well if we are talking ancient DNA it can be quite degraded when extracted but there is research in this field.
more recently in the 1950s, cells from a cervical cancer patient called henrietta lacks have been used for an enormous amount of research. The HeLa cell, is an immortal cell line, its the most commonly used human cell line and they are derived from Henrietta lacks cancer cells.
Hela cells have been used totest polio vaccines in the 1950s, they were also the first human cells cloned in the 50s. since then they have been used in cancer research.that is all i remember from a lecture when it was mentioned about 8 years ago!
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