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Play to Cure: Genes in Space
Cancer and Society
Life, love, and loss: a tale of terminal cancer
Talking to Ourselves Andres Neuman Translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García Pushkin Press, 2014. Pp 160 ISBN 978-1782270553
Mario has terminal cancer. With not much longer left to live, he sets out on a final delivery journey in his truck with his 10-year-old son, Lito, to give him an experience to remember him by. Meanwhile, his wife, Elena, remains at home, anxiously waiting for the pair to return and struggling to deal with her own grief and inner turmoil. Talking to Ourselves, the short novel by SpanishArgentinian author Andres Neuman, is the story of one family’s experience of a life cut short by cancer. The story is narrated alternately by the three main characters. Lito, blissfully unaware of his father’s predicament, excitedly recounts the daily adventures of the trip. Although apparently noticing that something is not quite right—observing, for example, that
his father tires easily and takes a lot of pills—his childlike enthusiasm for life and the typical musings of a 10-yearold boy offer some light relief from the novel’s poignant undertones. Mario’s contributions are in the form of voice recordings that he wants to leave for Lito to listen to in the future. As his illness worsens, he expresses his frustration at his fate, and leaves paternal advice for the son who he will never see grow up. Elena pours out her emotions in painfully honest and emotive diary entries. As she attempts to come to terms with Mario’s imminent death, she seeks comfort from famous literary works and enters into an illicit love affair with her husband’s own doctor. It is Elena who ultimately bears the burden
of describing Mario’s death and the aftermath, during which she continues to shield Lito from the truth about the illness that has killed his father. The fact that the story is narrated by the three family members gives the book a very personal feel and creates a strong sense of identity. Although we always know how it will end, the book is very engaging, and the final chapters provide both the characters and the reader with a sense of closure. A powerful, beautifully written, and emotional novel, Talking to Ourselves sensitively addresses the very real topics of mortality and loss, which we ultimately all have to face at some point in our lives.
Katherine Gourd
Web Play to Cure: Genes in Space Play to Cure: Genes in Space was released on Feb 4, 2014, and is available for download from the Apple App store or the Android Google Play.
For more on GameJam see Cancer and Society Lancet Oncol 2013; 14: 294
688
As a geneticist in possession of a large amount of cancer genomics data, it is unlikely that your first thought about its analysis would involve piloting a rocket through space. However, this is precisely what Cancer Research UK has accomplished, with the creation and release of Play to Cure: Genes in Space. This app is designed specifically to crowd-source genomic data analysis through people’s love of quasiaddictive mobile games. Conceptually developed in a single weekend (GameJam) in March, 2013, by teams of scientists working in tandem with games technology developers, the app is a departure from previous crowd-source analysis programmes. For example, another Cancer Research UK venture was Cell Slider, which involved the general population classifying breast cancer samples: the programme use reduced the classification time from 18 months to 3 months. Genes in Space is a little different. To play, people map out a path through
an asteroid-strewn landscape to collect the highest concentrations of the precious material ‘Element Alpha’. They then fly their ship through the plotted course, aiming to pass through the densest areas to collect the most amount of the element they can. The analysis lies within the plotted and flown course through ‘Element Alpha’—the mysterious element is in fact breast cancer genomic data. The pattern of Element Alpha, shown as spacedust to the player, are microarray peaks and troughs, representing losses and gains in genetic copy number. By harnessing both the extreme sensitivity of our innate visual pattern-recognition systems, and having every player map the same courses at least twice, the collective effort to analyse the data will be both faster and more accurate than currently available computing abilities. Crowd sourcing scientific analysis is not new: the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (SETI) Institute outsourced analysis of radio telescope data as a screensaver in 1999. However, harnessing the public’s love of mobile gaming is an innovative way of getting analysis done faster. Moreover, there is a huge demand for such games: encouraging people to think of their playing a game as a participating in the fight against cancer will surely prove a winning strategy. It is important to note the limitations of such a platform. This analysis is only for breast cancer microarray data; and even then only for large-scale genomic alterations. Even assuming it is successful, we have yet to develop personalised medicine that can target all discovered genomic alterations, let alone newly discovered ones. However, if all the game ultimately achieves is to raise awareness while having fun waiting for the bus, then it will still be worthwhile.
Cassandra Coburn www.thelancet.com/oncology Vol 15 June 2014
Life, love, and loss: a tale of terminal cancer
Talking to Ourselves Andres Neuman Translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García Pushkin Press, 2014. Pp 160 ISBN 978-1782270553
Mario has terminal cancer. With not much longer left to live, he sets out on a final delivery journey in his truck with his 10-year-old son, Lito, to give him an experience to remember him by. Meanwhile, his wife, Elena, remains at home, anxiously waiting for the pair to return and struggling to deal with her own grief and inner turmoil. Talking to Ourselves, the short novel by SpanishArgentinian author Andres Neuman, is the story of one family’s experience of a life cut short by cancer. The story is narrated alternately by the three main characters. Lito, blissfully unaware of his father’s predicament, excitedly recounts the daily adventures of the trip. Although apparently noticing that something is not quite right—observing, for example, that
his father tires easily and takes a lot of pills—his childlike enthusiasm for life and the typical musings of a 10-yearold boy offer some light relief from the novel’s poignant undertones. Mario’s contributions are in the form of voice recordings that he wants to leave for Lito to listen to in the future. As his illness worsens, he expresses his frustration at his fate, and leaves paternal advice for the son who he will never see grow up. Elena pours out her emotions in painfully honest and emotive diary entries. As she attempts to come to terms with Mario’s imminent death, she seeks comfort from famous literary works and enters into an illicit love affair with her husband’s own doctor. It is Elena who ultimately bears the burden
of describing Mario’s death and the aftermath, during which she continues to shield Lito from the truth about the illness that has killed his father. The fact that the story is narrated by the three family members gives the book a very personal feel and creates a strong sense of identity. Although we always know how it will end, the book is very engaging, and the final chapters provide both the characters and the reader with a sense of closure. A powerful, beautifully written, and emotional novel, Talking to Ourselves sensitively addresses the very real topics of mortality and loss, which we ultimately all have to face at some point in our lives.
Katherine Gourd
Web Play to Cure: Genes in Space Play to Cure: Genes in Space was released on Feb 4, 2014, and is available for download from the Apple App store or the Android Google Play.
For more on GameJam see Cancer and Society Lancet Oncol 2013; 14: 294
688
As a geneticist in possession of a large amount of cancer genomics data, it is unlikely that your first thought about its analysis would involve piloting a rocket through space. However, this is precisely what Cancer Research UK has accomplished, with the creation and release of Play to Cure: Genes in Space. This app is designed specifically to crowd-source genomic data analysis through people’s love of quasiaddictive mobile games. Conceptually developed in a single weekend (GameJam) in March, 2013, by teams of scientists working in tandem with games technology developers, the app is a departure from previous crowd-source analysis programmes. For example, another Cancer Research UK venture was Cell Slider, which involved the general population classifying breast cancer samples: the programme use reduced the classification time from 18 months to 3 months. Genes in Space is a little different. To play, people map out a path through
an asteroid-strewn landscape to collect the highest concentrations of the precious material ‘Element Alpha’. They then fly their ship through the plotted course, aiming to pass through the densest areas to collect the most amount of the element they can. The analysis lies within the plotted and flown course through ‘Element Alpha’—the mysterious element is in fact breast cancer genomic data. The pattern of Element Alpha, shown as spacedust to the player, are microarray peaks and troughs, representing losses and gains in genetic copy number. By harnessing both the extreme sensitivity of our innate visual pattern-recognition systems, and having every player map the same courses at least twice, the collective effort to analyse the data will be both faster and more accurate than currently available computing abilities. Crowd sourcing scientific analysis is not new: the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (SETI) Institute outsourced analysis of radio telescope data as a screensaver in 1999. However, harnessing the public’s love of mobile gaming is an innovative way of getting analysis done faster. Moreover, there is a huge demand for such games: encouraging people to think of their playing a game as a participating in the fight against cancer will surely prove a winning strategy. It is important to note the limitations of such a platform. This analysis is only for breast cancer microarray data; and even then only for large-scale genomic alterations. Even assuming it is successful, we have yet to develop personalised medicine that can target all discovered genomic alterations, let alone newly discovered ones. However, if all the game ultimately achieves is to raise awareness while having fun waiting for the bus, then it will still be worthwhile.
Cassandra Coburn www.thelancet.com/oncology Vol 15 June 2014