'Play to Cure'

It's interesting that there is still a huge cohort of individuals shunning the 'technological' revolution, the old-fashioned lovers who advocate the Victorian era and slam smart phones, tablets and the whole 'App' world- and to an extent I agree- being outdoors and seeing the world is a wonderful experience, but we're approaching an era where we should embrace the technological advances as we see it's benefits in science and medicine as well as current affairs; social networking used correctly allows you to have the world at your finger tips, what we should be advocating, instead is to use it for the greater good and to reach out to all four corners of the world.

Something which has inspired me today is the discovery of a new app called 'Play to Cure', the app was developed by a bunch of programmers and Cancer Research UK, and what they've created is this cool space game- a primitive and straight forward game on appearance but the benefits of it are absolutely remarkable and the start of, in my opinion, something quite revolutionary...

The following is taken from the Cancer Research UK website and explains how the game works and the science behind it...

The game

The mission of Genes in Space is to collect a fictional substance dubbed Element Alpha. This represents genetic cancer data, which might underpin certain types of cancer.

As a recruit of the game's 'Bifrost Industries', your mission is to collect the valuable and tradable substance Element Alpha and rise through the employee ranks by:

• Mapping your route through the densest areas of Element Alpha.
• Following your route as you fly through space collecting as much Element Alpha as you can, destroying asteroids along the way.
• Avoiding and shooting asteroids to get to the next level of Element Alpha collection.
• Upgrading your ship to become more powerful and trading your Element Alpha for more points.

The science behind the game

The data analysis goes back to our scientists at two key points:

• firstly when you map your route through the Element Alpha
• secondly when you fly your spaceship through the intergalactic space course to collect this substance.

By playing Genes in Space you'll be analysing significant amounts of genetic data which would have taken scientists hours to do. This data can then be used to develop new life saving treatments.

(Link here - http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/support-us/play-to-cure-genes-in-space )

'Route Mapping' - the densest areas 'Element Alpha', depicted in the white, mimic the genetic variances seen in human sequencing code

This for me is an example of what we can use technology for, how we can create such a simple idea and turn it into something fantastic. Through playing this simple game, we are providing an analysis of genetic variances in our genetic data, the aim being is that it will cut down the period of time taken to spot these variances due to the sheer man power, for example, instead of having 500 scientists working on these, to spot the genetic variations, by allowing the game to go viral, could see millions and millions of people doing the same thing in the format of a game- saving time, which if you are a victim of cancer, is absolutely precious.

This isn't the first project by Cancer Research, their first one which they launched in 2012, 'CellSlider' has had hugely promising results...

Since launching in October 2012, Cell Slider has had around 200,000 unique visitors, and nearly two million breast cancer images from the SEARCH and POSH breast cancer studies have been ‘classified’. 

CellSlider, launched in 2012, has shown promising results

In the first few months, Cell Slider got through 1000 samples from the SEARCH study that had previously taken 18 months to analyse by eye. 

It's really important that we encourage this sort of technological advancement, because it can lead to greater things. It is vital that we start acknowledging change and instead of disregarding it's inevitability, we start to welcome it and use it with good intention.


Social media allows us to connect with millions of people around the world, it's time to start sharing with them the things that count and making a change in the world. We've all seen how quickly something becomes viral, so let's start making the right things, the vital things, go viral so the whole world can get involved and in the case of 'Play to Cure', help in the battle towards finding a cure for cancer.