Emma Rigby

Tech specialists and scientists joined forces over the weekend

Imagine that you could help beat cancer just by playing a game on your smart phone. It might sound far-fetched, but we’re working to make this idea a reality.

Over the weekend of 1-3 March we brought together Cancer Research UK scientists and technology specialists to develop a mobile game to help speed up our research.

Emma Rigby from our press office watched the events unfold and shares her diary of the weekend below.

Day 1: developing ideas

It’s 6.30pm on a Friday and most people are heading home after a long week in the office but for this team of experts, the work is just beginning.

We’re at Google Campus in London for a 48 hour GameJam – an event where technology experts build computer games. As we mentioned in our last post, – this is a GameJam with a difference, bringing together Cancer Research UK’s scientists and more than 50 experts – developers, designers, gamers and mobile specialists including gurus from Amazon Web Services, Facebook and Google.

There are new ‘game jammers’ from Eventbrite and return experts from Cancer Research UK’s first hackathon event last year. There is support from Citizen Science Alliance, Omnisoft and students from Imperial and City University.

People have travelled from as far as Seattle, Dublin, Belfast and the Isle of Man to be here.

Everyone’s giving their time and expertise for free to develop a mobile phone game to speed up cancer research.

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Cancer Research UK is funding research on adenoviruses to beat cancer

On the whole, adenoviruses don’t do us any favours.

These microscopic particles invade human cells, wriggle their way to the cell’s nucleus – and then hijack the cell’s internal machinery to replicate as rampantly as possible. They replicate so fast, in fact, they burst our cells open. They then spread around the body looking for new cells to invade.

This makes us feel pretty ill, and causes cold-like symptoms in most people (although some types can cause more severe symptoms).

However, it’s not all bad news.

On the plus side, adenoviruses are, by a quirk of fate, particularly good at infecting and destroying cancer cells. One reason for this is that our body’s immune system often ignores tumours, making them more susceptible to infection.

Viruses also have relatively simple structures that can be easily modified to make them behave differently. They can even be tweaked to form the basis of powerful new cancer treatments – something Cancer Research UK and others are investing in at the moment.

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