Category - Cancer

Face to Face with the New Optimists: Lawrence Young talks about challenging cancer

Professor Lawrence Young, Head of the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, is the latest in our Face to Face series of interviews with the New Optimists. He’s recently contributed to the Challenging Cancer Kindle book, and in the video above he talks to us about what he’s optimistic about.

He also touches on the work of the College, which areas of scientific research he’s most excited by at the moment, and the future developments that he believes could help us combat the scientific challenges we’re facing right now.

You can see more from our Face to Face series here or by visiting the New Optimists YouTube channel.

Round-up: Face to Face with the New Optimists

Here’s a quick recap of the interviews we’ve posted so far in our Face to Face series. We’ve got more of those coming soon, and if you click here you can leave your questions which you’d like us to ask the New Optimists.

Jack Cohen talks about reproductive biology:

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What’s coming up for the New Optimists

There are lots of exciting things coming up for the New Optimists in the next few months. As well as more Face to Face interviews with some of the scientists who have contributed to the project, there are some other big things which we’re very excited about.

• There will be some activity over the coming months to tie in with the first Kindle book, Challenging Cancer. We’re also going to be working on forthcoming Kindle books, which will cover topics such as renewable energies, ageing, and how scientists view the world.
• The New Optimists Forum is something we’re really looking forward to – a series of unconference-style gatherings where we bring together scientists to talk about viable approaches to deal with challenges which we will face in our near future. The first Forum theme is the prevalent topic of Food & Cities.
• There’s also a book in the pipeline about stem cell research, covering epigenetics and how our environments reprogramme the human genome.

Challenging cancer – Ask the New Optimists!

We’ve already done a few interviews with the New Optimists for our Face to Face series and we’re going to be doing some more very soon, with some of the contributors to our Kindle book on cancer. And we’ll also be doing an interview with Kate Cooper, the woman behind the project.

Is there something you’d like to ask the New Optimists? Leave your questions in the comments section and we’ll put them to the scientists on your behalf!

Face to Face with the New Optimists: Andrew Peet

Continuing our Face to Face series where we meet with the New Optimists, this is a short video clip which was filmed at the launch of the hard copy of the book last year, at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham. In it, Dr Andrew Peet – an oncologist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital – talks about his optimism and what made him want to contribute to the book.

His chapter, ‘Brain tumour imaging – the dawn of a new era’, will be included in the forthcoming Kindle book on Challenging Cancer, which will be available soon.

Face to Face with the New Optimists: Paul Moss on controlling cancer

Our first Kindle book, The New Optimists: Challenging Cancer has just been released so it’s a good time to continue our Face to Face series by getting to know some of the scientists who have contributed essays on the topic.

We’ll be interviewing some more of the New Optimists over the summer, but here’s a video we first posted before the launch of the book last year – it’s an interview with Paul Moss, Head of the School of Cancer Sciences at the University of Birmingham, and Director of the Birmingham Cancer Research UK Centre.

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Seeing inside a child’s brain

The recent posts about the brain have an intriguing slant to them, what to make of the messy porridge between our ears and how it somehow makes us who we are. But brains can sometimes host disease, go wrong . . .  It’s every parent’s nightmare. Being told that your child has a brain tumour. And it’s not so long ago that medics only had the option of learning from crude X-rays what was going on, or scarily brutal surgery. Today, however, the latest in brain scanning techniques have revolutionised both diagnosis and treatment.

In this video clip, Dr Andrew Peet, an oncologist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, says

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Meet the New Optimists – Andrew Peet on cancer imaging

This is part three of our round-up from the launch event, and this time around we’ve got a quick chat with Dr Andrew Peet who talks about what compelled him to take part in this project.

Controlling cancer

Cancer is one of the big health and scientific challenges facing us in the 21st Century. In this exclusive video Paul Moss, Head of Birmingham University’s School of Cancer Sciences, gives a taste of his New Optimists essay and tells us why the future of cancer treatments looks positive.

Brain games

Leading on from my post about neurocinematics, it seems I’ve got the brain…er…on the brain. It got me thinking about Adrian Williams’ chapter on ageing diseases and how the brain is affected over time by the functions we need to grow, live and survive.

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