Cancer Causation, Mutagenic Potential, and Metastasis: Understanding Cancer with James Shapiro

How can bacteria, viruses, and even cuts and burns lead to cancer? Could cancer one day become a manageable, livable disease akin to HIV?

For expert answers to these questions and more, tune in.

You’ll discover:

• How the mutagenic repair system leads to novel genome sequences and extrachromosomal DNA, particularly in many types of cancers, and why this repair system might have evolved
• How cancer cells alter their genomes and heredity, and how this can impact epigenetic regulation
• Whether cancer derives from a single tumor cell, or groups of cells
• Under what circumstances chemotherapy can trigger a transformation into a more deadly, malignant type of cancer

James Shapiro is a biologist working in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, and he has decades of research under his belt. On today’s show, he pulls from years of research and accumulated knowledge to discuss various topics in the field of cancer and cancer research.

These include the mutagenic potential in DNA repair systems, types of chromosome rearrangement, epigenetic regulation, speculation about whether cancer cells see and behave as a “whole” or individually, what causes cancer cells to metastasize, differences between the immune response to primary tumors vs. metastases, the role of certain therapies in inducing damaging changes in cancers, and much more.

Visit https://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/ to learn more about Shapiro’s work.

Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/30PvU9C