0
Interview
7 June 2015 2.00 h

Beat cancer by living longer

Salvador Macip Every Monday at 6.30pm, El Punt Avui TV airs the interview series, Going Native. This week, Neil talks to cancer and ageing researcher at the University of Leicester, Salvador Macip.
Why can­cer re­search?
Can­cer was what in­ter­ested me the most. Can­cer is a very im­por­tant dis­ease that has a lot of im­pact, and from the bi­o­log­i­cal point of view it is fas­ci­nat­ing how a sin­gle cell can wreak havoc in the body in the way that can­cer does.
What about the myth­i­cal 'cure for can­cer'?
When we talk about can­cer, we are talk­ing about at least 200 dif­fer­ent dis­eases, so find­ing a sin­gle cure for all them is not some­thing any­one thinks about any more. We need many cures for many can­cers. And 'cure' is not the right word. Cur­ing can­cer means get­ting rid of can­cer, which could hap­pen some­times, but it re­ally means hav­ing the dis­ease under con­trol, just to stop it killing you. So now sci­en­tists are think­ing about keep­ing can­cer con­trolled, like di­a­betes or hy­per­ten­sion, by tak­ing a pill for the rest of your life, maybe.
Isn't can­cer just a nat­ural part of liv­ing longer?
Yes, but more fas­ci­nat­ing is the flip-side: age­ing as a con­se­quence of our de­fences against can­cer. It's true that as we age we have more chance of get­ting can­cer and if we lived until 200 we would even­tu­ally get can­cer. But, also there are a lot of mech­a­nisms in­side the cell and the body that pre­vent can­cer. One of the side ef­fects of these de­fences is that we may be age­ing be­cause of it. By the time you turn 50 or 60, you are see­ing all the side ef­fects of this de­gen­er­a­tion of our bod­ies as older peo­ple. Can we sep­a­rate them and have pro­tec­tion against can­cer with­out age­ing? That is one of the things we are re­search­ing and I and other sci­en­tists think there is a way to keep them apart, to in­crease our longevity, or age bet­ter or pro­tect your­self against age­ing with­out sac­ri­fic­ing your pro­tec­tion against can­cer. In the lab right now, we try­ing to find some­thing that could some­how stop or delay age­ing but not cause you to de­velop can­cer.
Peo­ple liv­ing longer is a se­ri­ous prob­lem for so­ci­ety.
There's no point ex­pand­ing lifes­pan if you end up sit­ting in a chair for 20 years. So, can we pro­long life but keep you ac­tive for longer? One ex­per­i­ment we are fin­ish­ing now is about find­ing a com­pound we think could do both things at the same time. That's the goal: you don't want to live to 120 and miss the last 30 years of your life. At the same time, we live on an over­crowded planet, so what's going to hap­pen when we have a pill that can pro­long our lifes­pan? How will we deal with over­pop­u­la­tion? How will young peo­ple ac­cess the job mar­ket? Crack­ing the age­ing prob­lem from a sci­en­tific point of view is a great thing but from a so­cial point of view it can com­pli­cate things, so you have to think very care­fully.
Do you also worry it will only be for the rich?
When the first an­tibi­otics be­came avail­able there weren't enough for every­body, so only the rich could be saved from pneu­mo­nia. Even­tu­ally it gets through to every­body, but it's true there is a pe­riod of months or years in which only the rich have ac­cess to drugs. An ex­am­ple is drugs against AIDS. Now we have all an­ti­retro­vi­rals that were first avail­able in Eu­rope, while in Africa, where the prob­lem is very big, did not have ac­cess to the drugs. Now, after a few years, those drugs are get­ting to them too. This has to be thought through care­fully. In my lab and other labs we are close to find­ing a drug that will slow down age­ing. If it's not me, then my neigh­bour will find it and if not this year, in 10 years. What's going to hap­pen? The so­cial prob­lems will be enor­mous.
So, it's no longer just sci­ence fic­tion?
I also write sci­ence fic­tion books and things you think are never going to hap­pen, we are now get­ting ready to do them. It may not be pos­si­ble today, but it will be in 10 years. So, some of the fu­tures we see in movies and books will be on us sooner than we think, which is some­thing we need to con­sider very se­ri­ously.
And the sci­en­tific progress seems ex­po­nen­tial.
Sci­ence is ad­vanc­ing faster than so­ci­ety, which can­not cope with the things we are pre­sent­ing. We are talk­ing about things like cloning, which was im­pos­si­ble 10 years ago. We started cloning sheep, but only two years ago there were the first steps into cloning human cells. It it is some­thing that will hap­pen in the com­ing years. We need to dis­cuss if we want these things to hap­pen. Sci­ence and so­ci­ety work to­gether. Sci­en­tists don't work in iso­la­tion; we work for so­ci­ety, we get money from so­ci­ety for our re­search, so so­ci­ety needs to tell us where to go. It's im­por­tant that every­one knows, to talk about it on TV, to write books and give lec­tures on it so we all un­der­stand where sci­ence is right now. If I have a pill ready that will let you live 20 years more, we need to see that this is hap­pen­ing soon and that it's not sci­ence fic­tion any more.
Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.

Published on

Most Viewed