Question: Could you study chemistry rather than biology to become a cancer researcher?

David MacLean answered on 17 May 2022:

Hi Keira!

So I actually did study chemistry. I studied it in school and went to University to study Chemistry.

I know a few people at my work here that have chemistry degrees. There are so many different parts of cancer research and you can get there by so many different routes. One of the people I worked with last week was an engineer, there are physicists, computer science, doctors, and mathematicians, you name it!

It also depends on what you want to do. Many chemists will work on finding new drugs to test on cancers and this is mainly looking at changing drugs that already exist to make them work better.

I know a couple of researchers who have chemistry degrees and they have spent a year in a chemistry lab making drugs and they are now going to spend the next 3 years in our lab trying those drugs in different cancers.

Now I have another degree which is Cancer Science, so I have a little bit more biology than these other chemistry researchers, but everyone has to learn how the lab works, so everyone is in the same position when it comes to the lab (no one knows what they are doing when they start out, you learn as you work).

It’s so difficult to think where your chosen subject will take you but there is actually quite a lot of overlap between subjects. Biologists need chemists to make the drugs, chemists need biologists to test the drugs against cancers, and you can sit in the middle doing both if you want!

Great question Keira 🙂