Question: how do you stop cancer cells dividing?

Alex Pool answered on 14 Nov 2014:

Great question!

There are loads of drugs at the moment that are aimed at stopping cells dividing, and they all work a bit differently. There are two major methods – one is to cause blockages in the DNA which means the DNA can’t be copied to make a second set for the cell to divide in two. The other is that when the cells go to divide there are tiny tubes in your cells called microtubules which are used to pull the cell in two. There are drugs that are designed to interfere with these tubes to stop that division happening.

The big problem at the moment is that normal cells in your body need to divide too, so whilst the drugs work against cancer they also work against your normal cells, which is why patients get such horrible side effects. So work is being done (including my research) into how we can stop cancer cells dividing whilst leaving the normal ones alone.