STRAIGHT TALK
with Dhruba Deb
Scientist by day and artist at night,
Dhruba Deb, is interested in understanding the complexity of cancer.
He is finishing up his PhD in Cancer
Biology at UT Southwestern Medical
Center at Dallas. On his own time,
he has started an art-science collaboration project with four Dallas-based
artists. Deb is training himself to become a science-based artist who can
contribute to both cancer research
and fine art.
By Megan Guerber
Contributor
neous’ disease. Lung cancer is different from
MG: To begin, can you briefly describe for those
less familiar why cancer is such a difficult disease to brain cancer that is different from pancreatic
cancer, so on and so forth. Even within one
study?
type of cancer there are subgroups of patient
tumors depending on their biological properDD: Some types of cancer are difficult to
study and, more importantly, difficult to cure ties and therapeutic outcome (inter-tumor
heterogeneity). To complicate the matter
depending on at what stage the disease is
diagnosed and on the availability of personal- further, within one patient’s tumor, not all
ized treatment options. If diagnosed in early the cancer cells can be the same (intra-tumor
heterogeneity) at a given time point. There
stage, with the advent of personalized medicine, it can be cured completely. Now, cancer are lots of questions that remain unanswered.
What is the extent of this heterogeneity in
can be a complicated disease as it is not one
a patient’s tumor? What is the connection
disease. It is a combination of multiple disbetween cancer-causing genes and the tumor
eases. In addition, cancer cells are not some
heterogeneity? If multiple subpopulations of
pathogens, like bacteria or viruses, from the
cells are present in a tumor, what would be
outside of the body. These cells are normal,
the best treatment option to target all types
healthy cells in the body that have underof cancer cells? Can treatment options alter
gone stress events and have transformed
this heterogeneity over time? Because of
into cancer cells. So, a treatment should be
these reasons, some types of cancer remain
directed in a way that it only targets these
difficult to cure completely.
transformed cells and not the healthy cells
in the body. Finally, cancer is a ‘heteroge-
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SciArt in America February 2015