11. 04. 2025
Reading time: 3 minutes
“Cancer can occur even if you do everything right,” says geneticist Veronika Vymetálková. And she knows what she’s talking about – not only as a scientist but also as a patient.
Doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer in 2022. She didn’t underestimate anything, went for preventive check-ups and had regular examinations when a small lump was found. “For a long time, it looked like everything was fine. But in the last six months, the lump started to grow and make itself known, so I sensed that it might be bad,” recalls the head of the Department of Molecular Biology of Cancer. “My scientist’s brain kicked in right after I was told the diagnosis. Suddenly, some of the connections came together much more clearly for me. I now know what we want to focus more on in our research – and what we can realistically do to help patients.”
She and her team are particularly interested in the question of why chemotherapy works for some cancer patients and not others. “We are trying to unravel the genetic background of specific individuals. The basic fact is that we are all genetically different, and at the same time, tumours are also genetically different. We know from doctors who have responded to the treatment and who haven’t. We then compare the two groups of patients with each other according to selected molecular genetic markers. We try to pick out which of these markers might be responsible for resistance to treatment.”
The evolution of experimental medicine is very dynamic. Every now and then, new potential drugs emerge and go through a series of clinical trials. “The possibilities today are incredible; there are already several types of treatment. Not only classical chemotherapy, which affects both cancer cells and healthy cells, especially those that multiply rapidly (these cells include hair root cells, which then lead to hair loss). In addition, there are biological treatments that target only cancer cell molecules, or immunotherapy, a modern method of cancer treatment that is developing rapidly. This therapy does not directly target cancer cells but rather activates the ability of the body’s own immune system to recognise and destroy these cells. We are going forward. Diagnoses that were not curable 20 years ago are now.”
The full interview can be found on the CNN Prima News website (open in a new window – only available in Czech).
Photo: Jana Plavec / CAO of the CAS