Top documentary films: Curing cancer full film: The three best ideas that I learned
As we know cancer has been known as an incurable disease where abnormal cells proliferate in an uncontrollable fashion and spread to many organs through the bloodstream and the lymphatic system. It has been a lifelong quest for many researchers to understand the cause of cancer and ultimately to find a cure for cancer so that many innocent lives can be spared from the fatal disease. The documentary film “Top documentary films: Curing cancer full film” produced and published by Documentary Films, presents to us the search and findings of many researchers such as an American human geneticist Mary Clare King, biologist David Botstein, biochemist Patrick Brown, oncologist Dr. Brian Druker, and other researchers…show more content… The three ideas that are mostly discussed in this film are 1) the discovery of breast cancer gene BRCA1, 2) usage of Microarray towards the identification of various types of cancer, and 3) the discovery of a drug named Imatinib mesylate or Gleevec by Dr. Druker that targets the molecular defect of a cancer cell while leaving healthy cell unharmed.
It has been well established that the mutation of DNA results in the development of cancer and these cancer-causing mutations can be initiated by chemicals, radiation, infectious agents, errors in DNA replication, and be inherited. Dr. King was infatuated with the idea of finding the specific gene that caused breast cancer. Finally, after years of research and trying to understand just how genetics and family histories of cancer played a role in cancer risk, in 1990, Dr. King found the gene which was linked to breast cancer and it was named BRCA1. BRCA1 or BReast CAncer 1 is a mutated inherited gene which is