That Cancer Conversation

Welcome back to another episode of That Cancer Conversation! 

Here at Cancer Research UK, we’re grateful to benefit from the support of more than 25,000 incredible volunteers, who donate their time to help us beat cancer.  

So, in the lead up to Volunteers’ Week on the 3rd of June, we want to say a huge thank you to our brilliant community of volunteers, whose support makes our life-saving research possible.

T...

You can’t beat cancer without scientists. 

Without research the progress we've made in beating cancer wouldn’t be where it is today. But that progress is at risk of stalling.

To keep up and to plug the funding gap, we would need to find an additional £1 billion pounds over the next decade.  

In this episode, Sophie sits down with Owen Jackson, head of policy at Cancer Research UK to understand what chal...

Welcome to another episode of That Cancer Conversation!

While bowel cancer is relatively rare for people in their 30s and 40s to get bowel cancer, cases are rising.  

At 39 years old Dr Anisha Patel (@doctorsgetcancertoo), a practicing GP, was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer. Now, 6 years on, Anisha is dedicated to raising awareness of cancer, especially in adults under 50.

In this episode we talk to Anisha...

Welcome to another episode of That Cancer Conversation!  

April is Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month, where charities and the young people we support come together to raise awareness of the unique challenges of having cancer during some of the most intense years of your life.   

In this episode Sophie speaks to Shaumya, who was 18 years old and getting ready to go to medical school when she w...

We’re back with another episode of our subseries, Longer, better lives! This series unpacks our recently published manifesto, Longer, Better Lives: A Manifesto for Cancer Research and Care.    

You might recognise our next guest, as she was part of our ‘Together We Are Beating Cancer’ campaign featuring on a TV advert as well as billboards and posters on display across the UK, during September.  

We’ve made huge progress on cancer in the last 50 years. 

But not all of it has been felt equally. People’s experience of the healthcare system, and ultimately how likely they are to be successfully diagnosed and treated, varies massively. These are known as health inequalities and can be caused by a range of factors. 

In this episode of That Cancer Conversation, we’re exploring how deprivation impacts cancer inequaliti...

Welcome to another episode of That Cancer Conversation! We’re launching a new subseries which unpacks our recently published manifesto, Longer, Better Lives: A Manifesto for Cancer Research and Care.

At Cancer Research UK, we know that huge strides have been made in beating cancer – with survival in the UK doubling over the last 50 years.   

But this hard-won progress is at risk of stalling.   

Th...

Clinical trials are a vital step in the development of new medicines of any kind, and that includes new cancer treatments. They aim to find out whether new treatments are safe and effective and work better than current treatments. 

In this episode of That Cancer Conversation, we're going to take you into the world of clinical research and walk you through the pathway, from how we design trials in the first place, right thro...

Our latest podcast is about how families cope with cancer, and the scientific progress helping them through.

Austin was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukaemia when he was 2 years old.

In 2016, scientists took some cells from Austin’s immune system. Dr Sara Ghorashian, from the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, changed them so they could recognise cancer cells as a threat. Then ...

In our new podcast series, That Cancer Conversation: One to One, we’re talking to the people who make Cancer Research UK what it is. 

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and in this first episode we’re hearing from Dr Laura Danielson, our research lead for children’s and young people’s cancer.  

Laura moved across the Atlantic to make sure her work had the best chance of helping patients. And, since arriv...

Beating cancer means beating it for everyone. And crucial to doing that is tackling health inequalities, unfair and avoidable differences in health across the population and between different groups within society. 

In this episode, we're diving into the inequalities faced by one group in particular, the LGBTQ+ community, and what we can do to make cancer care more inclusive for everyone.   

To get some in...

When thinking about cancer treatment, our first thoughts may be about surgery or chemotherapy. 

But what about what we eat? 

In this episode, we hear from Dr Clare Shaw, a lead cancer dietician and therapy researcher who has written multiple books with the Royal Marsden Hospital, including The Cancer Cookbook. And Professor Karen Vousden, co-founder of Faeth Therapeutics, a company looking at how diets could help be...

Kicking off the second season of That Cancer Conversation, we talk about sex, intimacy and cancer.

From chemotherapy to sex shops, we sit down with three amazing guests to discuss sexual wellbeing for those living with and beyond cancer. 

Cancer nurse and psychosexual therapist, Dr Isabel White speaks about the various ways cancer can impact our sexual wellbeing and shares some tips on how to have conversations about sex...

Cancer has inhabited earth for longer than humans have, but we don’t have a one-fits-all, silver-bullet cure. 

From Egyptian mummies and medieval wolves, to precision medicine and microscopic evolution, we take a look at the past to find out why curing cancer is more complex than we think, and what is needed next to get us closer to a future without cancer.  

In this latest episode of That Cancer Conversation, ...

Last year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced an ambitious plan: to create a ‘cervical cancer-free future’. The potential reward is huge. If we succeed, cervical cancer will become the first cancer to be ‘eliminated’ on this scale.

Globally, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women - 99% of cases worldwide are caused by a few high-risk strains of a common virus called human papillomavirus and in many ...

This episode, we're joined by Sigourney Bell, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, whose work looks to find new treatments for supratentorial ependymoma, a rare children's brain cancer.

Outside of the lab, Sigourney is the co-founder of Black in Cancer, a global organisation that aims to strengthen the network between Black people in the cancer space whilst highlighting Black excellence in cancer research and medicine.

From malaria to multiple sclerosis, plants have given us compounds which help treat countless conditions. But could a tree growing on your street hold the next life-changing drug?

From Madagascar to a Kew Gardens in London, we explore how scientists across the globe use indigenous knowledge and pharmaceutical science to help develop the treatments of tomorrow.

And in a world-first, a cannabis-derived drug, known as Sativex, i...

For the first episode of That Cancer Conversation, we explore infertility and cancer.

From teenage body worries to an intercontinental surrogacy story, we chat to Max, Kreena and Eleanor – 3 people whose cancer journeys affected their fertility in some way.

Is freezing sperm and egg cells the only option? Not necessarily.

We sit down with Professor Richard Anderson, deputy director of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre f...