A Bermudian played a key role in groundbreaking research that led to the understanding of how a devastating cancer can spread — and ultimately prove fatal.

Nat Peckett, a Bermuda High School graduate, is on a team of oncology medics carrying out research work at Edinburgh University that made the discovery in tumour plasticity — the study of how cancerous cells can change their genetic make-up before spreading to other parts of the body.

The group’s work was seen as a significant breakthrough in the battle against bowel cancer, which is a widespread killer in much of the Western world.

Research carried out by the Edinburgh University team revealed how some bowel tumours can metastasise — spreading to other organs and diminishing the life expectancy of patients.

The team discovered that some bowel cancer cells could morph into apparently regular, healthy cells, making them difficult to detect by the body’s natural defences.

Its findings made international headlines last month.

The research team examined how cancer cells can “shape-shift” to enable their spread. potentially leading to new treatment strategies.

Additionally, researchers are now investigating how bowel cancer cells manipulate the immune system, potentially opening avenues for new immunotherapies.

Dr Peckett, who began her medical studies as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University seven years ago before taking three years out to pursue a PhD, explained what motivated her to become involved in medical research.

Now in her fourth of six years of medical study after successfully completing her doctorate, she told The Royal Gazette: “Everyone becomes a doctor with the goal to give their patients the best possible care available.

“Being involved in research really inspired me to also have the goal of improving the standards of care and expanding what a particular medical speciality has to offer the patients in that field.”

Dr Peckett, whose work was funded by Cancer Research UK, said that a course in cancer biology while at medical school in Scotland sparked her interest in “how cancer cells behave and also the possibility of undertaking research alongside a clinical career”.

She added: “I soon arranged to work alongside an oncology registrar at one of the hospitals in Edinburgh for a summer research project on renal cell carcinoma — a type of kidney cancer.

“I worked on creating a database of blood test results from patients with RCC to determine what parameters might predict recurrence and poor outcomes.”

Because of her studies, Dr Peckett was taken on to work under Kevin Myant at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer at Edinburgh University.

Dr Myant’s laboratory has investigated stem cell transformation — known as ATRX — in the colon to identify the pathways that drive it.

Dr Peckett said: “The team initially started working on ATRX over five years ago, so it has certainly been many, many hours of hard work to get from that initial point to publication.

“I worked closely with Dr Patrizia Cammareri, a postdoc in the lab who characterised how ATRX mutant colorectal cancer cells behave, with my project focusing on the mechanism by which loss of functional ATRX results in the changes in cell characteristics and behaviour that we observed.

“I would say the biggest breakthroughs were in 2023 when our collaborators produced some data demonstrating that the same patterns of cell behaviour are present in human data and not just restricted to cancers with mutant ATRX.

“We know that approximately 7 per cent of colorectal cancers have ATRX mutations, and we have really done a lot of work to understand how this subgroup of cancers behave and why they are so aggressive.

“Now that we understand that this mutation is prevalent, leads to aggressive disease, and how it works, I think the soonest tangible benefit could be from work developing specific treatments or monitoring for this group of patients.”

She added: “Unfortunately, guessing an exact timeline for this is still decades off.

“The broader impact of this work on understanding plasticity and metastasis will be harder to measure, but it is no doubt still an important piece of the cancer puzzle.”