In the Welsh town of Port Talbot, sixty years ago next month, Chris Evans received his very first chemistry set for Christmas. “I was six years old, a naïve little Welsh boy, and I thought that I was going to cure all the cancer in my street,” recalls the distinguished scientist and co-founder of the Cancer Awareness Trust.
During that time, he explains, cancer seemed responsible for numerous deaths around him, prompting his determination to find a cure. “As a young boy, I recall my mother becoming upset because another mother across the street was dying of cancer. My father would tell me that John up the road was going to die soon because he had cancer,” he reminisces. “Being passionate about science, I decided to create a potion. I would shake it in the plastic tubes of my chemistry set, aiming to cure all the cancer around me. That was my goal. By the age of 12, I realized I probably wasn’t skilled enough, and neither was my modest chemistry set.”
While the latter may hold some truth, he has undoubtedly dedicated his life to pursuing his initial objective. Now at the age of 65 and knighted in 2001, Evans is recognized as a world-leading cancer scientist and a prominent figure in biotechnology. He has founded numerous health companies, including Celsis and Rutherford Health.
One of the treatments he specializes in is Lutetium-177, also known as Lu-PSMA, a radioactive therapy administered intravenously to target cancer cells. He identified this option for Andy Taylor of Duran Duran, the band’s 62-year-old guitarist who was diagnosed with incurable stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer in 2018. However, earlier this summer, Taylor shared with an interviewer, “I was classified as palliative, end-of-life care. And now I’m not; I’m asymptomatic.” Taylor describes Evans as a genius, dubbing him “the Elon Musk of cancer.”
Taylor has expressed that his darkest moment occurred six weeks after his diagnosis when the reality of having to bid farewell to his family truly sank in. However, he remains hopeful that this moment is still far in the future.
Evans reflects that there was once a time when being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer meant almost certain death. “Yet now,” he adds, “individuals are living longer and experiencing greater comfort than ever before, potentially for decades, despite having cancer as a chronic condition.”
As per Cancer Research UK, cancer is categorized into stages using a numbering system. Stage 1 indicates that the cancer is small and confined within the organ where it originated. In Stage 2, the tumor is larger but has not yet spread to surrounding tissues. Stage 3 signifies that the cancer has begun spreading into nearby tissues and lymph nodes. Stage 4, also known as metastatic cancer, denotes that the cancer has spread to another organ entirely.
“Essentially, the challenge in treating stage 4 cancer lies in the fact that the original cancer has had sufficient time to evolve and disseminate throughout the body,” explains Dr. Sam Godfrey, the research information lead at Cancer Research UK. “The longer a cancer persists, the more opportunity its cells have to undergo genetic changes. In stage 4, there could potentially be numerous distinct cancer cells within a tumor, which then detach and spread throughout the body, infiltrating various regions.”
