Understanding how cancer cells eat

Meet Dr Emma Vincent as she tells us about her research and the artwork inspired by her work that reflects on the pathways that we and our cells can make

Amy holt (1st year PhD), Emma Vincent, Aleksandra Ryk (MRes) and Danny Legge (Postdoc)

Can you tell us a little about your work?

I work on the link between type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer. People with type 2 diabetes and obesity have an increased risk of developing cancer across their lifetime. We want to find out why this occurs to stop it happening.

‘The discovery of new things is an incredible, fulfilling experience.’

I study metabolism within our cells, so essentially, I look at how cancer cells eat and fuel themselves in order to divide. So how they make all the building blocks they need to make a new cancer cell. To do that cells need to change the metabolic pathways that they use in order to make all these building blocks.

What message did you want the art based on your research to tell?

The message with the artwork that I am hoping to get across is something positive: I thought it would be nice to show that, by treating, managing and improving type 2 diabetes and obesity, it is possible to do something positive to help prevent disease progression and to lower cancer risk.

Eating more healthily and exercising more can help adjust your path towards a healthier life. I was thinking there are parallels between how cells change their pathways to determine their fate and how people can also change the decisions they make to positively influence their health.

Pathways by Sophie Rae

What do you think and feel when your see the artwork?

It makes me feel optimistic and perfectly captures the message I wanted communicate. The piece made me think more about the positive sides to my work. As a researcher you sometimes get bogged down in the fine detail and you can get quite single minded about making little discoveries. You can forget there is larger positive message in what you are doing. I think the most valuable thing I have got out of this experience is that it made me reflect on how what I do is perceived by other people – I don’t do that very often.

What do you feel is the biggest challenge in your field right now?

The biggest challenge is understanding what it is about obesity and diabetes that increases cancer risk. Research is making huge progress to understand the links, but the real challenge comes in finding things that can be targeted to reduce the risk and progression of cancer in people with type 2 diabetes and obesity, to make a real difference.

Another challenge with type 2 diabetes and obesity is making a positive change in a population of people. We know that unhealthy lifestyles are contributing to rising levels of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Encouraging and supporting one person to lose weight, for example, is a relatively easy challenge, but it’s difficult to scale that up in a large population.

What are you proud of in your career so far?

The discovery of new things is an incredible, fulfilling experience. During my postdoc in Canada we found a pathway that cancer cells use in response to nutrient restriction. So, if cancer cells can’t get enough nutrients, they switch to this pathway to stay alive. It is a pathway that nobody at the time thought cancer cells could utilise. This was a significant finding in the field and made me feel proud.

Do you have any words of wisdom for aspiring researchers?

There is no escaping that research is tough! But if you have that drive to discover what isn’t known then just keep going and be persistent. It can be a career of many rejections, but when you do make discoveries it is 100% worth the effort.

Emma Vincent is a Doctor of Cancer Metabolism in the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Emma specialises in the links between obesity, diabetes and cancer risk.

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