Clone your tumour to fight your cancer


If you had cancer, would you want to make clones of your tumour? (Image: Tom Haugmat)


"The first doctor I saw told me I had six months to live," says Antonia Crawford. She was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in August 2013, at the age of 43.


She went on to have the standard treatments but, aware that they might not be the most effective against her particular cancer, Crawford also did something quite extraordinary: she had bits of her tumour implanted into a group of mice. Once the tumours had grown in them, the mice were given a range of different treatments, in an effort to find the drug combination that would work best for her. "As a patient, I just didn't have the time, nor could my body have gone through trying all these different drugs on myself," Crawford says.


It's too early to say whether ...


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