They grow up so fast – NWCR symposium

Surely Lee is fully grown? Well yes, but that doesn’t mean he gets to escape the obligatory proud PI post.

Today was the North West Cancer Research annual symposium in Liverpool and Lee was presenting a little bit of his NWCR funded research. His presentation involved a poster and a 1 min teaser talk. Rather than provide my opinion this time, I thought I’d just share his talk and you can make your own mind up about whether you’d like to see more (our friendly description of this project is available here).

The poster session itself was crazy busy, so here is the at a distance shot.

One of the cool things about this conference is that there are always a few speakers invited that are aren’t clinical or cell biol or other discovery science but instead provide something different to think about.

This time we had a psychologist and breast cancer survivor talking about all the extra aspects of a cancer diagnosis and treatment beyond the direct treatment. I personally found this emotive, powerful and thought provoking, and I’m sure the rest of the scientists and medics in the audience were equally moved and inspired. Certainly, the stories resonated with the experiences of my wife as she went through chemo and radiotherapy, and it brought back to the fore some things I was dealing with then (coping with hair loss).

The other non-science talk was an enlightening journey through the history of cancer research. Lots of interesting things in there. The image below is life expectancy of the different areas of Liverpool (in relation to one of the train lines), and highlights how wealth and health inequalities relate. The ability of history to inform policy and direct efforts where they are needed most was a strong message.