Question: Anne, with your background in biochemistry and having met that inspiring cancer patient, did you ever consider going into the field of cancer treatments or even developing it into a vaccine?

Anne Moore answered on 9 Nov 2015:

Thanks for the question Scotty. I have worked a little in cancer treatments; specifically in cancer immunotherapy, where we try to kickstart the immune system to fight the tumour. There’s been alot of excitement in this area recently, with about 3-5 new drugs (monoclonal antibodies) that work by removing an immune checkpoint; this then unleashes the immune system to fight the tumour. You might remember the debate in the media last year about a new melanoma treatment (ipilimumab, yervoy) & whether the HSE should use it. These are very expensive therapies & they only work in a subset of patients. However, with more research, we’re now beginning to understand and to identify patients who will respond, so then the treatments won’t be wasted on patients who won’t respond to these therapies.
The patient who I met on the bus all those years ago was going to NIH for a cancer immunotherapy clinical trial. His belief that the researchers and clinicians would heal him was very inspiring. He had no clue of the huge doubts that I had in my mind at that time. Hopefully the treatment worked for him.
If you understand the immune system, you can start applying this knowledge in different ways; vaccines, cancer, autoimmunity (arthritis, psoriasis etc), allergy. As it happens, I’ve just received a grant to work on a very novel cancer therapy, with a pharmaceutical company. This will be a new chapter in my research, as my group now needs to set up some new cancer models in the group.
Hope this helps!