There is growing evidence that cellular behaviour change is the initiating factor, and this leads to a cascade of events where DNA mutations are common, easily measurable, but not necessarily the root cause of cancer
initiation. This paradigm is particularly important since human tissues harbour many cancer associated mutations but the vast majority of these will never form cancers. We hypothesise that during critical
tissue stress events, cells lose their memory of what they are and, instead, they form a distorted part of an organism in the form of a tumour. Our projects are aimed at testing this hypothesis, which may pave the way for future cancer prevention medication – stopping cancer before it starts, and tackling the root-cause of relapse following chemotherapy.