What can a 3D atlas of cancer teach us? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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When cancer exists in the body it has a three dimensional structure, an architecture, that only now is being looked at in detail to understand better how cancers behave. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins explains.

Nelson: there's been this cancer research wide almost effort over the last few years to inventory all the cells that are present in cancers that are in people. Of course what you learn quickly is that there are cancer cells present and then there are normal supporting kinds of cells, there are immune cells that are allowing the cancer to grow and prosper and not eliminating it. There's a lot to be learned clearly and what this group has tried to do is aggregate some of these things and start to come to some conclusions that are somewhat provisional but all of which are interesting so far.     :32

Nelson says various technologies and techniques are empowering this line of investigation, and he expects it will bear fruit clinically by enabling identification of vulnerabilities that can be exploited to eliminate cancer. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.