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In laboratories across the world, scientists are trying to stay one step ahead of cancer – anticipating the disease’s next moves before it outmanoeuvres treatment.

For more than a century, many of these experimental studies have been funded by Cancer Research UK. And it’s working. The charity has helped double cancer survival in the UK over the past 50 years.

Now, Cancer Research UK is exploring new frontiers in the fight against cancer, and the story behind them is explored in a special branded episode of The Rest Is Science podcast, presented by mathematician Prof Hannah Fry and YouTuber Michael Stevens.

The evolutionary model

We all think we know evolution – Charles Darwin, monkeys to man – until it turns out that the same forces forming species over millions of years also have a darker side. In cancer, evolution can happen at extraordinary speed.

“The same evolutionary principles that shaped life over millions of years can play out inside the body in a matter of months,” says Dr Claire Bromley, a science expert at Cancer Research UK. “So, instead of seeing cancer as a single event, we’re looking at it as evolution in motion. Cancer cells divide and mutate rapidly. They never stop adapting.”

From reaction to anticipation

But what if we could predict, outsmart, and even steer cancer’s next move? Scientists think we can. Bromley suggests that seeing cancer as an evolving system has shifted research strategies from “reacting to what’s there” to “anticipating what might come next”. This approach is already reshaping treatment, helping doctors spot cancer earlier and even prevent it.

As the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to improving and saving lives through research, Cancer Research UK funds more than 4,000 scientists, doctors, and nurses to focus on more than 200 types of the disease. Major research programmes currently backed by the charity have been designed to stay “one step ahead” of cancer, including TRACERx EVO, which is tracking how lung cancer evolves; team ATLAS, exploring why some people avoid cancer; and Dr Alejandra Bruna, who is investigating shapeshifting cancers in children and young people.

The evolutionary model in action

All three studies are hoping to outsmart cancer by using its own evolutionary abilities against it.

For the TRACERx project, researchers have followed hundreds of people with lung cancer from diagnosis through to treatment and potential relapse, revealing clear evolutionary patterns in how cancers start, adapt, spread, and outsmart therapy. Insights from TRACERx have already led to potential new tools, including a blood test that can detect a cancer’s return months before scans can, and a vaccine that could prevent the disease in people at high risk.

Meanwhile, team ATLAS wants to work out why some people never develop cancer despite being at high risk – centenarians with no cancer diagnoses, people with heavy exposure to known risk factors, and identical twins where only one develops cancer. Researchers believe the immune system’s antibodies play a critical role here. Understanding these patterns could lead to new prevention strategies and treatments inspired by immune responses.

However, when it comes to cancer in children and young people, an entirely different approach is needed. Tumours in children and young people have fewer mutations than adult tumours, having had less time to accumulate them. But their cells can switch identity, even “play dead” during treatment – waking up later in a more aggressive form.

To track those changes, Bruna is building “molecular recorders”, which are designed to track the evolutionary journey of each cell. Her team are testing drugs on tumour samples to try to stop cells changing identity. Because these cancers follow different evolutionary paths from adult cancers, there’s a clear need for treatments designed specifically for their biology – not just adapted from adult therapies.

And on The Rest Is Science

Following decades of support from Cancer Research UK, eight in 10 people in the UK receiving cancer drugs are treated with one developed by or with the charity’s scientists. This impact extends to millions more around the world, and understanding how cancer evolves could help millions more again.

In the special Cancer Research UK branded episode of The Rest Is Science, cancer research will be explored from a number of unexpected angles: gut bugs, whales and even naked mole rats. Ultimately, says Bromley, Cancer Research UK’s future- thinking story will reveal how outsmarting cancer’s defences can lead to the creation of more nuanced and effective prevention measures, tests and treatments.

“We’re no longer waiting for a diagnosis and reacting, we’re anticipating it and staying one step ahead,” she says. “We want to make sure that when cancer evolves, science evolves faster.”

Listen now: the special branded episode of The Rest Is Science is available to listen to now on all major podcast platforms