Roxanne Khamsi

Yeah, you could say our understanding has evolved, right?

So we used to think about cancer as the result of one or two genetic errors.

And that was kind of the pervasive thinking for decades.

What recently has been shown is that cancers are just rife with mutations.

There can be in certain types of cancers, like colorectal cancers, for example, there's some theories that there's like a big bang of mutations that happens early on that just seeds a huge amount of diversity there.

So instead of thinking of a tumor as something that was the result of one or two genetic errors, we now think of tumors and malignancies as hotbeds of mutation.

And the challenge then is to think about which of those mutations are driving the cancer and making it most resistant to treatment.

So, yeah, I want people to understand that we need a revolution in our understanding of mutation.

And part of that is I want to destigmatize the concept of mutation.

It's not always a bad thing.

So back in the late 1990s, for example, scientists found that there were these two boys in the New York area that were born with a type of immunodeficiency disorder.

that they were supposed to live in a bubble essentially their whole life.

And what they found, though, is that these two boys were defying any expectations.

Their immune systems were doing much better than the scientists expected.

And when they looked closely, they found that there actually had been mutations that these boys had acquired that had corrected their inherited disorder.

And it's not the only example.

So there's a disease called Fanconi anemia.

And about 20% of people with that disorder actually start having blood cells that correct the disease that they have.

And in 5% of those cases, they have enough that they start to progress towards just curing themselves.

So it is like finding the answer within.