Uploaded June 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The pleasure of this film was getting to tell the story of the kind of quiet, unassuming hero-scientist that one does not get to meet too often. Andrew Willey, as one of the other scientists in the film Martin Raff said, was in the wilderness, his work ignored, for years. I had the great good fortune to meet him and tell his story at the precise moment his life's work was quite suddenly seen for what it was - fundamentally, game-changingly important. He was the hero of the piece. He died in 2022.
I also got to meet (as will you) and interview his mentor, Sir Alastair Currie. It was Professor Currie in fact who gave the ability of cells to commit suicide, the name 'Apoptosis'. Apoptosis comes from ancient Greek and means the falling off of petals from the flower. I thought at the time that it was typical of this sort of educated and gentlemanly scientist, that they should wish to give their discovery a fitting and poetic name.
At the time I interviewed Professor Currie he was dying of leukaemia or cancer - I'm afraid I can't remember which it was. He had lost all his hair and was worried he would look peculiar. So, he wore a hat. He was such a lovely old gent that when he died before the film was broadcast, I asked the BBC if I could dedicate the film to him.
The film is full of top flight scientists who could now see what Willey and Currie had suspected decades earlier but had not been able to prove, that Apoptosis could hold the key to a 'magic bullet' cure for cancer. Willey got his moment of recognition. After so many years dedicated to an idea whose moment had not yet come - and for all he knew might never come if he was wrong about it - he started to get invited to some of those elite scientific meetings. You get to see him introduced at the first one. It was a lovely moment of recognition - the first of many.
And today as I sit and write this, the Guardian newspaper reports on a new wonder treatment for bowel cancer - "Drug that ‘melts away’ tumours could replace surgery for bowel cancer" says the headline.
The drug, pembrolizumab is an immunotherapy compound. It works by apoptosis. Cancer cells that previously would have to be blasted with highly toxic chemotherapy chemicals, the kind that kill all your healthy cells as well, simply melt away on their own by triggering cell suicide -apoptosis.
Professor Willey was right.
The pleasure of this film was getting to tell the story of the kind of quiet, unassuming hero-scientist that one does not get to meet too often. Andrew Willey, as one of the other scientists in the film Martin Raff said, was in the wilderness, his work ignored, for years. I had the great good fortune to meet him and tell his story at the precise moment his life's work was quite suddenly seen for what it was - fundamentally, game-changingly important. He was the hero of the piece. He died in 2022.
I also got to meet (as will you) and interview his mentor, Sir Alastair Currie. It was Professor Currie in fact who gave the ability of cells to commit suicide, the name 'Apoptosis'. Apoptosis comes from ancient Greek and means the falling off of petals from the flower. I thought at the time that it was typical of this sort of educated and gentlemanly scientist, that they should wish to give their discovery a fitting and poetic name.
At the time I interviewed Professor Currie he was dying of leukaemia or cancer - I'm afraid I can't remember which it was. He had lost all his hair and was worried he would look peculiar. So, he wore a hat. He was such a lovely old gent that when he died before the film was broadcast, I asked the BBC if I could dedicate the film to him.
The film is full of top flight scientists who could now see what Willey and Currie had suspected decades earlier but had not been able to prove, that Apoptosis could hold the key to a 'magic bullet' cure for cancer. Willey got his moment of recognition. After so many years dedicated to an idea whose moment had not yet come - and for all he knew might never come if he was wrong about it - he started to get invited to some of those elite scientific meetings. You get to see him introduced at the first one. It was a lovely moment of recognition - the first of many.
And today as I sit and write this, the Guardian newspaper reports on a new wonder treatment for bowel cancer - "Drug that ‘melts away’ tumours could replace surgery for bowel cancer" says the headline.
The drug, pembrolizumab is an immunotherapy compound. It works by apoptosis. Cancer cells that previously would have to be blasted with highly toxic chemotherapy chemicals, the kind that kill all your healthy cells as well, simply melt away on their own by triggering cell suicide -apoptosis.
Professor Willey was right.
