Lighting up cancer: innovation in paediatric surgery

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Stefano Giuliani and his team (at the University College London (UCL) Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health in the UK) who are developing a ground-breaking technique that literally ‘lights up’ cancer cells, making removal much easier.
• This resource also contains interviews with the team members Laura and Dale. If you or your students have a question for them or Dr Giuliani, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The team will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Dr Giuliani’s research, and tasks them to think further about the applications of fluorescence within science.
• The animation summarises the research and is accompanied by a script.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!