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Question: Do you use real cancer cells from humans when the cancerous part gets removed or is it from animals or genetically made? Is there ever shortage? Is there any restrictions with it ?
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Asked by u11bradshawt to Kat on 21 Mar 2013.Question: Do you use real cancer cells from humans when the cancerous part gets removed or is it from animals or genetically made? Is there ever shortage? Is there any restrictions with it ?
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u11bradshawt commented on :
Really wow !!!
poor mice !!! but for the greater good i guess??
are the mice dying before?
are brain tumors cancerous ? does it depend on the tumour? my gran has one and has had three strokes !!!! she is very poorly but is getting better !! what is the most interesting thing you have done ? today at school i disected a sheeps lungs and blew them up !!! it was soooo cool!!!
thank you from u11bradshawt
Kat commented on :
Really enjoying all these questions!
The mice are humanely killed as soon as they show any symptoms so that they suffer as little as possible. They have slightly different rules in the US, but in the UK the government has very strict rules about how you treat lab animals (strictest in the world!). You have to do everything you can to make sure the animals don’t suffer, so if you give them a tumour, you can’t let them die from it as that would mean the animal had been in pain. In fact, I get quite upset when I have relatives that keep their sick pets alive for ages when they’re obviously dying – it seems really cruel to me and you would be in serious trouble with the government if you let that happen to a lab mouse.
Sorry to hear about your gran, I hope she feels better soon, the cancer treatment might make her feel ill too. Brain tumours are cancers, but there are different types and they all behave differently – it definitely depends on which tumour you have. The ones I work on are malignant (which means that they are quite aggressive and can spread from the site of the original tumour) and are a bit nasty. You get other brain tumours, however, that are much easier to treat and some that we call benign. This means that, although the tumour might get bigger, it won’t spread – this is good because it normally means that if your doctor removes the tumour it won’t come back. Or sometimes the doctors will treat the tumour with drugs to make it smaller and the patient can live for several years with a small tumour. As I’ve said, all cancers are different!
Ooh, its difficult to say what is the most interesting thing I’ve done. Getting the data from our mice in the states has been really interesting. The tumours we give the mice bioluminesce (which means they produce light) which we can detect through the skin using a special camera (it doesn’t hurt the mice when they take the pictures).
We get pictures like this.
http://www.perkinelmer.com/CMSResources/Images/44-140405PST_WMIC2012_Lectin.pdf
This means that we can see the tumour as its growing and see what happens to it. This is really exiting for me as we just can’t get this sort of information from cells in a dish or from patients. To actually see the tumour as its growing gives us a lot of information.
I also love developmental biology (learning how the body develops), and I’ve done some really cool stuff looking at how blood vessels develop in zebrafish embryos. We used fluorescent fish which was really fun – you get amazing 3d images using the 3d microscope. They have some great videos here of the sort of things we used to do:
http://www.fishforscience.com/videos
I blew sheep lungs up at school as well!! The only probably is, I’m vegetarian – I almost threw up.
We dissected lots of strange things at university – cockroaches, mussels, starfish, whelks, crabs. We also had to put woodlice through a maze – all mine escaped!
u11bradshawt commented on :
Haha !!! Wow thanks !!
We dissected a pigs heart which was pretty cool !!! I don’t eat red meat !! My mum is quite strict on it !!! The videos you sent the top 5 were interesting but that’s all I have had time to watch so far!!! The mice u sent are really interesting wow !!!
I really hope you win I’m a scientist !!! And u are so clever!!
The nice are really awesome but I’m only allowed outdoor animals but I have fish and a dog !!! I really want a hamster!!! They are kinda like miice !!! Thanks again love u11bradshawt