Question: is it time consuming to research about cancer?

Sarah Thomas answered on 12 Mar 2011:

I think the problem with researching about cancer is that it is a really big subject! It would take years to learn everything there is to know about cancer. And the other problem is that you don’t just have to know a lot about chemistry, you need to learn a lot about biology and medicine too. So to get around this problem, there is a network of people across the UK and we all specialise in different areas of cancer research. There are thousands of us and there’s not just scientists in this network, there are doctors and nurses too. We work together on our different projects and we can help each other out if we have problems or questions. Like if I have a question about blood samples, I can get in touch with a blood doctor and they can help. Or when I was learning about the genes and DNA involved in cancer, I knew lots of biologists who helped me understand it all.

I think working together like this is the only way we are going to find a cure for cancer. Because it is such a complicated disease. Did you know that there are over 200 different kinds of cancer? It isn’t even just one disease, there are 200 types of cancer! This is why it is so difficult to fight!

In terms of time, I treat my research like a full time job. I work all day monday to friday. In the evenings I do a lot of reading and studying and marking the students reports. And sometimes I pop into the lab at weekends if there are really important things I want to get done! So yes I suppose it is very time consuming but I care about the subject so much, that I don’t mind.