Question: What motivated you to want to prevent blood cancer specifically, and not another type of cancer?

Sophie Robinson answered on 10 Mar 2015:

Hello Lucy,

Great question. Well until I started my PhD I was always interested in all types of cancer. However I was also interested in molecules called RNA. The gene I am working on that is mutated in patients with blood cancer degrades RNA so I felt that this PhD ticked both boxes of being cancer related but also RNA related.

Also when you are applying for PhDs it is not always possible to be too specific on what type of cancer you want to work on. It depends on what funding is available at the time and it just happened that my supervisor works as a consultant for blood cancer patients and he managed to obtain funding to work on blood cancer specifically.