The Experimental Oncology Division
at the Cross Cancer Institute and the University of Alberta
​is conducting research​ to understand what causes
​good cells to go bad in cancer.

What is cancer research?

• Cancer research is the study of what makes a cancer cell behave differently from a healthy cell
  
• The biggest challenge in cancer research is finding ways to kill cancer cells that won't harm healthy cells
  
• The more we understand about the many processes that go wrong in cancer, the better our chances are of finding new ways to treat cancer
  

Why is cancer research important?

• Cancer is a complex disease where many molecules and processes have to go wrong for a cell to become a cancer
• Cancer research allows us to identify the faulty molecules and processes that cause cancer
  • Every abnormal molecule and process we discover represents a possible new way to treat cancer
• Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
  • There is still a lot we don't understand about how processes become abnormal in a cancer cell
  • Future research will shed light on these defective mechanisms, but only some of them will make good targets for treating cancer patients
    • Researchers then must identify which are the best and safest ones to develop into drugs

How is cancer research done?

• We use many different materials and techniques to study all of the ways cancer cells become different from healthy cells
  • We study molecules to find ones that become abnormal in cancer cells
  • We study cell and animal models to see how abnormal molecules drive cancer as a disease
  • We study patient samples and perform clinical trials to transform our knowledge into new cancer treatments

Who does the research?

• Dedicated teams work together to generate new ideas that will allow us to understand cancer
  • Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research associates design experiments, do most of the hands-on work and mentor each other as they train for their future careers
    
  • Professors mentor their trainees, communicate the lab's findings and raise funds to drive the research

We work closely with these organizations