SPEAKER_04

But then there are other mutations like divide when you're not supposed to.

Avoid this kind of induced cell death called apoptosis and not others.

And so cancer doesn't just like start and then the next day you've got it.

It's a progression of events.

You have these precancerous lesions.

You have like a benign tumor, which eventually becomes a metastatic tumor.

But the immune system is key at every stage of the development because if you can reactivate the immune system in just the right way, then you can prevent the cancer from basically spreading or from metastasizing or from killing you, essentially.

That's exactly what is done.

In fact, when you get a tissue transplant or an organ transplant, you're suppressing the immune system.

The problem with that suppression is that you then put yourself at risk of cancer because what you're doing is you're turning off the immune system's ability to combat and go after a cancer the moment it forms.

So most people who are under immune suppression are at risk both of, let's say, virus infections, bacterial infections, but also for their cancers.

That would be a great thing to do if we could.

Right now, the only things that we have are systemic.

So yeah, I mean, for instance, if you could deliver to the organ that you're transplanting basically immunosuppressives locally, that would be great.

We don't have that yet.

But that would be via a form of gene therapy.

Do you want to come work in my lab?

You're accepted as a graduate student in the Stanford Department of Pathology.

Wow, that was easy.

One of the problems is that there are literally hundreds of different types of immune cells.