Preparing a cDNA library: these will be a storehouse of genetic information for cancer researchers. Credit: LIFE TECHNOLOGIES

Hopes that therapeutic advances are just over the horizon are bringing increased funding to cancer research. Scientists joining from a variety of fields should find an environment very different from that of the past decade.

In cancer research, the scientist can productively study almost any area of basic biology, whether it be signalling, apoptosis, motility, membrane synthesis or structural biology, says Daniel Louvard, research director of the Institut Curie in Paris, and an investigator of membrane interfaces. Researchers have begun to discern simple unifying principles underlying the intricate complexity of the course of the disease in individuals.

The atmosphere in cancer research today owes much of its excitement to the growing understanding that cancer mechanisms are both diverse and unifying, and that the apparent contradiction is resolvable, says Louvard. As we now realize, it is some finite and knowable number of misbehaving biological processes combinatorially relating to one another in a malignant clone that produces the individual disease profile.

“We're developing a new way of thinking about biology that will lead to real advances. This is one of the compelling attractions of cancer research in the period we are entering,” says Louvard. Scientific understanding combined with remarkable technological advances brings us closer to delivering better diagnosis and treatment. Innovations such as the DNA gene chip array, a technology being developed by Affymetrix of Palo Alto, California, and others, will allow the construction of a complete catalogue of a patient's genetic activity. Treatment can be tailored from that, based on profiles of which genes are behaving normally and which are aberrant.

New ways of thinking

Thea Tlsty, who studies genetic instability in breast cancer cell lines at the University of California in San Francisco, shares the excitement about the new avenues of investigation now opening up. One example is the use of trans-retinol as an antineoplastic agent. “Instead of using poisons to kill the cell and straining to mitigate side-effects in healthy cells, this approach causes cancer cells to, in effect, differentiate themselves out of existence,” she explains. It has become important in clinical use, and is just as significant as an intellectual concept, in showing a new way to think about cancer.

To explore and exploit new ideas, Tlsty says the cancer researcher ought to have competence in imaging, bioinformatics and computing, as well as in the biological and chemical basics. Yet it is a mistake for a scientist to think too closely about techniques, because in research the relationships between different regions of enquiry change rapidly. “These relationships are like droplets trying to coalesce. All the action is at the edges. Suddenly the two come together and there is no more interface — or rather there is a new interface that pops up somewhere else.” For the student contemplating a career in cancer research, or any area of biology, the point is to develop the ability to think analytically, to formulate the query, and to plan an experimental strategy that will work. These skills never lose their relevance, no matter what the experimental context.

But what about the Malthusian crisis of expanding numbers of PhDs chasing limited numbers of faculty positions and grants? “Only by taking a narrow view of a scientific education do you run up against a limit in cancer research,” says Tlsty. “The number of faculty slots in universities is limited. But there are many other areas: government, consulting on environment and hazards, research and development in industry, writing, tutoring venture capitalists, patent law. And the cancer research world is changing so rapidly that the educational and interpretive roles of the scientist are becoming especially important.”

Tomorrow's challenge

Louvard also sees opportunity as he gazes into the future of cancer research, but cautions that progress will depend on an intellectual reorganization. “We have become adept at dissecting a problem into its component parts, but now we have learned to put the pieces back together. To do this we'll have to improve communication among the participating disciplines. This is the great challenge of tomorrow.”

Cancer research awaits those who, like the group which catalysed the revolution in molecular biology a generation ago, have the ability to connect apparently unrelated findings and see the world in some fundamentally different way. “Perhaps it will be the physicists again,” Louvard speculates.