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Science and that is the same physics medicine, nature or space, time, a brain, life, the universe.

Today we're talking about cancer, the big sea.

It's a disease that's both feared and hated across the world.

And this week we find out how researchers are fighting back,

zooming in on cancer in unprecedented detail.

I'm Katani, and you're listening to The Naked Scientists.

The Naked Scientists Podcast is powered by UKfast.co.uk. Around the world more than 14 million people are diagnosed with cancer every

year and that figure is expected to rise to more than 21 million

by the year 2030 so it's a growing global problem. But before we find out how

researchers are using the latest techniques to zoom in on cancer, I want to take a step

back and find out exactly what cancer is and why we get it.

And who better to tell me than Dr. Emma Smith, science communications manager at Cancer

Research UK?

Normally cells are very highly controlled. They grow only when your body needs them and when there are signals to do so. Now cancer,

some of these signals, some of the genes in the cells have gone haywire, for

some reason the cells start dividing and multiplying out of control and then you have too many

of a certain kind of cell and that's when you get a tumor forming.

And are we talking about cancer as one disease?

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