[Applause]
cancer it's a disease of uncontrollable
cells growing throughout the body and is
arguably one of our greatest modern
medical challenges but put your hand up
have you ever wondered how cancer occurs
why it occurs or why some cancers are
curable and others are not you notice
that I've got my hand up too and I've
been researching the disease from over
ten years and in fact every cancer
researcher I know would also have their
hands up and that's because cancer is
incredibly complex to put it into
context if you looked at the total
number of scientific studies with the
word cancer in that abstract you would
find that there are over four million
papers and we're adding another 4,500
studies to that total each and every
week so not surprisingly trying to keep
on top of all that literature is
incredibly challenging now let's think
about how most of us interact with that
type of information
we're probably thinking social media
blog posts YouTube content designed for
rapid digestion with short half-lives
trying to summarize an entire body of
literature and the nuance behind that is
incredibly tough now let's just take a
quick example let's look at one single
statistic or a single graph so this is
showing you the total number of cancer
deaths per year worldwide from 1990 to
2017 and you can see that in total
numbers are constantly on the rise with
an alarming almost 10 million deaths
worldwide now if you looked at this
statistic by itself you know you might
think that we as cancer researchers are
doing a pretty poor job at preventing
and curing cancer so if you looked at
this from a different angle you'll
actually find that we're doing pretty
well if you looked at the actual rate of
how we're surviving over five year time
point comparing 1970 to 2014 you'll see
that we're not actually not doing too
bad that we're beginning to push that
needle closer to the right closer to
that one
hundred percent mark now there's
obviously a long way to go we're not
there yet we still haven't got a cure
for all cancers but it does show that
we're making progress and our
investments in medical research are
paying off now let's take another
example who here has seen something
being associated with cancer in the
media and then the next week the
complete opposite happening a good
example of this is coffee so put your
hand up if you ever heard that coffee
increases your risk of cancer now put
your hand up if you've heard that coffee
decreases your risk of cancer so we're
getting a mixing boat and you'd both be
right literally within the last six
months we've seen scientific studies
that have been spread widely in the
media showing both of these now again
you might be looking at me as a cancer
researcher and think man you guys could
have no idea what you're doing but this
is actually part of the scientific
process it's about looking at the entire
body of literature understanding the
weaknesses and strengths of each
individual study and coming to a
conclusion now if you're curious the
latest consensus is that coffee probably
doesn't either increase or reduce your
risk of cancer except for maybe
colorectal cancer and this is good
because I am definitely getting a coffee
as soon as I finish this talk but you
can easily see how one could be misled
misinformed or get an incorrect
assumption of what cancer is
now why is misinformation and cancer
important well when it comes to cancer
it can mean life or death there's an
abundance of evidence suggest that early
detection and early treatment leads to
better outcomes for patients and having
a better understanding of what cancer
fundamentally is allows one to change
their behavior to reduce their risk over
a lifetime and a great example of this
is the slip slop slap campaign
introduced by the Australian Government
in the 1980s now here the government
wanted to teach people about the harmful
effects of ultraviolet radiation from
the Sun that can damage our DNA and
cause skin cancer so my telling everyone
to protect themselves from the Sun put
in their skin putting sunscreen on and
avoiding the midday Sun it's only now
that we're really beginning to see the
benefits of that that the rates of
melanoma are actually beginning to go
down this is the first time in a hundred
years and this is particularly the case
in younger populations the people that
grew up with that message and this is in
stark contrast to the rest of the world
where the rates continue to rise
now we haven't even discussed about when
or how do people seek this cancer
information out and it turns out that
most people seek cancer information when
they themselves a friend or a family
member have unfortunately be diagnosed
with cancer and this is not surprising
out of sight out of mind but it does
raise some challenges being confronted
with a cancer diagnosis is tough you
don't know what it means for yourself
your health your family your finances
and then trying to understand what the
disease is happening in your body at the
same time with the complexity of what
cancer is it's challenging so I believe
ideally you'd be better to have a good
understanding of what cancer is before
cancer diagnosis because at least that
would help you understand what's
happening within your body and if you've
got a better idea of what the scientific
process is it might help you pass our
evidence base to non evidence-based
treatments or allow you to understand a
little bit more precisely the treatments
that they're trying to assign you so the
question isn't if an informed and
educated community is important the
question is how best do we do that are
there unique and innovative ways to
teach people about cancer to get them
excited to learn about it or to reach
younger demographics people that don't
tend to think about cancer because it
doesn't tend to occur to them as much as
an older generation and this has been
something that's been on my mind for
quite a few years and it wasn't until
recently that I've may have found out a
solution to that so every year all the
cancer research teams on our floor come
together to celebrate a year's worth of
hard work now we mix it up we try to do
a bit of team building have a bit of fun
and one year we did some
Tagg another year croquet but one year
we did an escape room now if you're not
familiar with an escape room it's an
interactive themed experience usually in
a room and usually go into there with
two to four people and you have to solve
a series of puzzles in a defined set of
time and escape herbs actually got their
start in digital video games back in the
90s before then being taken into the
real world and early 2000 before
exploding to Eastern Europe in 2010 and
now that there are over 5,000 escaper
and venues worldwide and it's even made
to popular mainstream culture such as
the Big Bang Theory now going back to my
story as you would expect for PhD
qualified scientists with over 50 years
of scientific training of course we
finished the room in 15 minutes wrong we
failed miserably I I think in our time
slot we only finished about 25 percent
of the room and that was with the help
of AIDS but it wasn't about that it was
about the experience it was about going
into a completely different environment
and so these escape rooms really have a
strong theme behind them and it could be
something as solving a murder a mystery
at a and the via Christmas party
it could be trying to escape a dungeon
trying to survive a zombie apocalypse
because these environments are so rich
and so different from the outside world
when you enter it it almost like resets
your brain it allows you to focus on
hand exactly what you need to do which
is solving those puzzles but it's also
that the tactile experience of it this
sounds the excitement of finishing a
puzzle and having to do that with your
friends and so I thought could we use an
escape room as a unique way to teach
people about cancer to get them excited
about it and if it Italy reach a younger
audience and so that's what we did we
created makings of a malignancy the
world's first cancer biology themed
escape room now it's a three by six
meter mark heater and we can set it up
anywhere around the world
but the benefit of the escape room is it
can really transport you in as a
different space and I'm commonly hearing
from people that cancer is just really
hard to visualize it's something that
occurs deep within a cell and when it
becomes a cancer deep within the body we
don't see it and this is where the
benefit of the escape room really shines
out so we decided to make our escape
room into three rooms so we can actually
start people in the skin we have to
solve a series of puzzles to become a
cancer before then spreading into the
bloodstream and then eventually the
brain and this shows people how a cancer
cell travels throughout the body and
because the pictures are just so vivid
and strong it really allows them to see
firsthand how cancer occurs but we can
build on this further and actually
design the puzzles to reflect cancer
biology and we took escape room owners
and designers together with cancer
researchers to show a number of
different mechanisms that cells have to
acquire to become a cancer and we call
these the hallmarks of cancer and this
could be anything from gaining a
mutation to be able to divide rapidly
the ability to spread to other parts of
the body or evading the immune system
each one of these different hallmarks
can be easily demonstrated in a puzzle
now to not give you too many spoilers
I'm just gonna give you a couple of
insights on how we did this so the first
example is a mutation that you need for
a cell to divide rapidly now we decided
to use a commonly used tool which is a
UV blacklight to reveal hidden messages
and here we're showing the UV blacklight
to show a key mutation that allows cells
to grow rapidly now the the benefit here
is that we can actually link the UV
black line to the ultraviolet rays from
the Sun showing that's how mutations
occur in your DNA and then we can add
preventive messaging similar to the slip
slop slap campaign I showed you why it's
important to protect your skin from the
Sun
another example let's look at am
univision so the immune system is
actually quite active and it's always
trying to hunt down any cells that are
going or get and becoming cancer and
some cancers can be tricky and they can
actually put this invisible cloak over
the top of them to hide them from the
immune system and I sort of like to
think of it as Harry Potter's invisible
cloak
now this puzzle is showing you a tumor
and a bunch of different cancer cells
that are beginning to to pop off around
it and you can see the immune cells are
trying to attack them now there's a
secret message hidden here and to solve
it you actually need to take a clear
plastic bit of paper and put it over the
top and this actually causes most of the
tumor cells to die but the few cancer
cells that survive are the ones that
have that Harry Potter invisible shield
and they're the ones that reveal the
messaging now you can see you don't need
to have an understanding of what cancer
is to finish these puzzles but you can
see how they've been designed to reflect
that and so at the end of our room we
actually have a ten minute video that
explains exactly how all these puzzles
were designed to reflect cancer biology
and not only can we introduce preventive
messaging but we can also talk about new
treatments such as immunotherapies a
type of therapy designed to boost your
own immune system to rip off that
invisible shield a drug that's really
had a revolution in terms of how we
treat cancer in modern days so much so
that had got the Nobel Prize for
medicine last year now with over 90% of
people who could seek out an escape room
being aged between 10 and 40 an escape
room could be a really unique way to
reach a younger audience to get them
engaged about understanding what cancer
is so while an escape room can't cure or
prevent cancer it just might be a really
unique way to teach people about cancer
to get them to seek out information and
reach a younger demographic that aren't
thinking about cancer so I'll leave you
with one final question
can you solve the puzzle lattice cancer