Oncology
Dates of course:
Sunday 23rd July-Wednesday 26th July 2023
Course description:
Cancer is a leading cause of adult mortality across the world. It is a fascinating and exciting field of science to work in. The Department of Oncology is part of the Medical Sciences Division at Oxford, the emphasis being on the word 'sciences’, this is not a route into medicine, it is a route into becoming a research scientist, or into the biomedical sciences in general. Our researchers come from across the UK and the World. They come from biology, chemistry, physics and maths. During the Oncology course you take part in a combination of laboratory, theory and tutorial sessions and will meet men and women who do amazing work to improve tomorrow's cancer medicine.
Our course will begin by exploring what cancer is and what behaviours make cancer cells so hard to treat. The course will involve laboratory practical sessions where we will learn how to grow cancer cells in the lab, look inside cells and understand how scientists perform techniques to measure gene and protein expression in cancer cells and patient samples. We will also learn in the laboratory, how scientists can make cancer cells fluorescent to study their behaviour under the microscope, and how we grow cells in complex 3D structures to mimic real life tumours. We will explore how scientists take the 20,000 gene complexity of a cell and figure out which changes drive cancer? How do we take aim at targets that will hurt the cancer cells and not hurt the patient? How do we distinguish between mutations that are important for treating patients and mutations that are not?
We will discover how to make sure that science done in the lab can change practice in the clinic. We will discover the power of medical imaging and the 21st century approaches to radiotherapy. We will discover that a tumour is not just a tumour. There is a modified environment surrounding the tumour, an environment that may need treating as well.
Course requirements:
None