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Multiple Myeloma is a type of blood cancer where the bone marrow and blood get completely taken over by white blood cells. Patients suffer from bone pain, fractures, tiredness and kidney damage. The survival rate varies from patient to patient, depending on their age and genetics. At the moment, we do not fully understand what happens in cells to lead to myeloma and the treatments we have work for some people but not others.

I work on a gene called DIS3. DIS3 is mutated in many myeloma patients but as yet, we don’t know why. When DIS3 is mutated it means that the DNA is changed and becomes faulty. How does this faulty DNA lead to blood cancer? This is what I’m trying to find out.

I work in a laboratory where a lot of what we do is genetic manipulation. This essentially means I cut out pieces of DNA from cells and watch to see how they behave!

All the work I do is on a very tiny scale. I grow cells originally taken from blood cancer patients that have been ‘immortalised’ so they grow and grow and grow without stopping, essentially meaning they can live forever. These cells need looking after, almost like pets, I have to feed them every couple of days and keep them warm in an incubator! When I have enough of them, I extract their DNA and create millions of copies of it in a test tube. Then I can analyse it with tiny molecular probes which allows me to see what is going on within the cells. I can then compare what happens in healthy cells compared with cancer cells.

As well as looking at their DNA, sometimes I need to look at the cells under the microscope to watch how they are growing. Sometimes I need to make them fluoresce brightly with different colours so I can track certain proteins as they move around inside! Like this: