Cancer and biomedical engineering

This activity asks students to consider the biology of cancer, and to use the information they research to produce a document summarising their main points. Dr Eleanor Stride is developing a treatment for cancer that encloses cancer treating drugs in bubbles that can be directed by magnetic fields to the cancer site before releasing the drug using ultrasound. This targeted approach avoids some of the damaging side effects of traditional chemotherapy, which is untargeted, and results in healthy cells being destroyed. 

There is a full set of hand-picked resources which go with this lesson, and develop students' understanding of the discovery and development of potential new medicines.

Curriculum links include cancer, chemotherapy, uses of ultrasound, targeted drug delivery, growth and development of cells, non-communicable diseases in humans, cell biology.