Question: If you were to create a successful cancer treating drug, how accessible do you think the drug will be?

Fiona Scott answered on 7 Mar 2019:

If I made a successful cancer drug I would want it to be as accessible as possible. If I could I would donate it freely to the NHS and wider to give to patients.

Sadly that can’t happen in reality because drugs take years and years to develop. Lots of money is spent on buying chemicals, paying scientists to make and test drugs and also payment is made to protect the idea of the drug legally. The price of a drug is often set so that the people who make them are able to recoup some, if not all, of their costs. There are government schemes in the UK that try to cover some of these costs so that the drugs aren’t too expensive.

I’m not actually making drugs techincally. I am making molecules called chemical probes that come before a drug project, to help biologists work out if shutting down a particular enzyme is useful for treating cancer. If I succeed in my project – which I’m very close to doing! – I’m actually going to make my research freely available so that other people can use it.