Question: How can we stop cancer from spreading?

Tim Millar answered on 10 Jun 2011:

My research is looking into this and there a few ways in which cancer spreads which we could target with drugs. First of all, finding the primary tumour as early as possible makes them much easier to kill with drugs and radiotherapy or surgery so early detection is important. Secondly, cancers often cause new blood vessels to grow into them and this helps the process of cancers spread as it makes it easier for cxancer to get into the blood system. if we can block new blood vessel growth, we can starve the tumour of oxygen and other nutrients and reduce its likelyhood of spread. The we can target the process of cancers flowing around the blood system and stop them attaching to sites away from th original tumour. Each of these targets is a goal of my research and we think we may be close to blocking new blood vessel growth and blocking the process of attachment to the blood vessel wall. Watch this space!