The students have been directed to use a combination of their results and its interpretation and their own resource, using a computer or tablet to answer the following questions.

 

Suggested student answers are in blue. Red is teacher background/ direction.

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• Question 1: Were there any differences between the cell results and the class average for that cell? If there were suggest an explanation as to why.

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The student needs to look at their own results from the activity and compare them against the class average for their cell type. If there is any significant difference in the students average and class average for that cell type, they are meant to identify that this could be due to chance as the game simulates a lose probability of whether that cell type would get affected by the chemotherapy treatment.

 

 

 

• Question 2: Was there any major difference in the average percentage of cells receiving the chemotherapy drug between the healthy cells group and cancerous cells group in the chemotherapy round? What about in the aptamer treatment round?

 

The game should produce a pattern of results where the percentage of average amount of cells that received the chemotherapy drug for the healthy fast dividing cells and cancerous cells in conventional treatment round should be close in number. Whereas the slow dividing cells should have a lower average percentage of cells that received the chemotherapy drug. Students should have analysed their results and filled in the table of percentages which they should draw on to answer this question.

In theory their answer should be something like this:

 

Yes there was a difference in the percentages of cells that received chemotherapy drugs between the 3 groups in the conventional chemotherapy round. The fast dividing healthy cells and cancerous cells had similar percentages of …….% And ……..% whereas the slow dividing healthy cells had …..% of cells receiving the chemotherapy drug. This changed in the aptamer chemotherapy treatment round where the fast dividing and slow dividing cells had 0% receiving the chemotherapy drug and the cancerous cells had 100% of the cancerous cells receiving the drug.

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• Question 3: Explain from the class results what is thought about what the chemo drug is targeting and why? Did the game rules replicate this bias of the chemo drug? Explain how?

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From the class results and the students answer from question 2, the student should identify that in the conventional chemo rounds the fast dividing healthy cells and fast dividing cancerous cells both had similar % of cells receiving chemo drugs which is because chemotherapy drugs target fast dividing cells. The second part of the question is to get them to identify that the game rules were structured so that fast dividing cells would more likely/ more often receive the chemo drug instead of the healthy slow dividing cells.

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The chemotherapy drug appears to be targeting fast dividing cells as the common factor between the healthy and slow dividing groups and the cancerous cells was that the fast dividing cells replicate quickly, like cancerous cells and in the results they both had similar % of cells that got the chemotherapy drug. The game replicated this by having a handicap in the rock paper scissor version that made a fast dividing cell more likely to lose against the teacher and by having less opportunity to roll a dice number that would give them a winning outcome against the teacher in the dice version.

 

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• Question 4: What is an example of a chemotherapy treatment side effect? How does this relate to question 3?

 

A symptom of chemotherapy treatment is commonly hair loss. This relates to question 3 because hair follicle cells replicate quickly. Because hair cells replicate quickly they get targeted more by chemotherapy drugs, killing the cells. When the hair follicle cells are killed the person loses that hair strand.

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The student should get this answer from a combination of some quick research, the introduction and inference by bringing together the concept learnt from question 3.

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• Question 5: From your results which treatment method appears to be more effective? Using the class results create a graph to show the differences between average numbers of drugged cells for the three groups when they were using traditional chemotherapy or aptamer bound chemotherapy.

 

Aptamer chemotherapy drug treatment appears to be more effective as it had 100% of cancer cells receiving the chemotherapy drug unlike in the conventional chemotherapy round that had ….% of the cancer cells receiving the drug. This change in cells being effected between the conventional treatment round and the aptamer treatment round shows a decrease of healthy cells being given the treatment to none of them receiving the chemotherapy drug in the aptamer round, highlighting again that targeted cancer treatment will have no (less healthy cells effected because it has more specific targeting minimising healthy cells being effected and causing the symptoms of cancer) effect on healthy cells reducing symptoms but also target all the cancer cells and get rid of most, if not all the cancer cells. (should highlight to students that scientists researching aptamer technology has the potential to cure some cancers)

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• Conclusions: Write a brief conclusion summarising the key concepts one has learned from this exercise and a point of interest one would like to learn more about after learning about aptamer technology.

 

Student should write a brief recount of their findings and why they have potential to be used to cure cancer/ improve cancer treatment. By getting them to reflect on what they found interesting it should get them more engaged and encourage them to do their own further research about aptamer technology outside of class if it grabs them enough.