You probably haven’t heard of anyone getting heart cancer. That’s because it’s an incredibly rare disease, affecting fewer than two in every 100,000 people.

It’s not that surprising that primary heart cancers are rare – that is, cancer that begins in the heart – as the muscle tissue cells in our hearts do not have a particularly high turnover, and it’s this turnover of cells that allows cancer to thrive.

However, the fact that the heart so rarely gets secondary cancers is truly bewildering. Secondary, or metastatic, cancers occur when cancer that starts in one organ spreads around the body. This happens when cancer cells enter our bloodstream.

As blood is constantly flowing through the heart, intuitively it would seem that the heart should be especially susceptible to secondary cancers. While these do occur more often than primary heart cancers, they are still exceedingly rare.

This is precisely what makes the heart so intriguing for cancer researchers.

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Now, in the first project of its kind, Worldwide Cancer Research is delving into how the organ protects itself from the disease and what that could mean for other cancer types.

There must be something unique about the tissue in our hearts that prevents it from developing cancer.

If we can understand why, can we use that knowledge to treat cancers in other places in the body?

The work will be led by Dr Serena Zacchigna, a medical doctor specialising in cardiovascular health who became intrigued by the fact that the heart loses its capacity to regenerate early after birth.

Her hypothesis is rooted in the question of whether this lack of cardiac regeneration is linked to the fact that cancer rarely occurs in the organ.

In other words, do the same mechanisms that stop regeneration also protect the heart from cancer?

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This has driven her research career investigating what makes the heart different from other organs in our bodies, in which cancers are all too common.

One factor is that the heart is always moving.

Dr Zacchigna and her team think that the mechanical motion of over 100,000 beats every day may protect the heart from tumours.

This is a brilliant idea that could have game-changing consequences for cancer treatments in the future.

Now running her own lab at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Trieste, Italy, her Worldwide Cancer Research-funded project will delve deeper into exactly what it is about our heart tissue that prevents cancer from developing.

While this project is more focused on understanding the molecular basis for the rarity of cardiac cancer, the lab's researchers are also looking at wearable technology that could mimic a beating heart, by replicating the mechanical motion, and could be placed around cancers at other areas of the body to inhibit cancer growth.

This could also see huge benefits for patients with more common cancers such as breast and skin cancers.

A wearable, non-invasive device that could slow tumour growth would be a game-changing development for common cancers like these that affect millions of people around the world.

The research is in early stages, but it builds on promising results from preliminary studies which back up Dr Zacchigna’s ideas.

For example, in a study in mice that disconnected one of the chambers of the heart so that only one half was beating, the team found that cancer cells multiplied much more quickly in these hearts than in their control group of mice whose hearts were beating normally.

To support this further, they have also shown that using a heartbeat-mimicking pacemaker on tumours actively prevents them from growing.

This is all revolutionary stuff, but to understand how this might translate into advances in treatments for humans, Dr Zacchigna and her team have a robust research plan to look at the detailed genetics of the heart and its cancer resistance.

These ideas might have sounded far-fetched a few years ago, but we know that it pays off to support scientists in pursuing the ideas that they believe will change the world.

Discovery research – curiosity-driven, novel and often risky – doesn’t always have an immediate application in mind, but has led to some of the most important advances in medical science over the last century.

The antibiotic effect of penicillin, the process of X-ray imaging, and the existence of stem cells were all discovered through research that let scientists’ curiosity lead the way.

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Nowadays, with a competitive funding ecosystem it can be difficult to justify research that doesn’t have an easily measurable impact – but to ignore innovative ideas because the immediate payoff isn’t clear is short-sighted, and means missing out on future life-saving treatments.

It can take decades for a new cancer drug to go from a novel idea, through pre-clinical research, clinical trials, and finally out to patients, but every cancer treatment that is currently out there saving lives began with discovery research.

We know this because we’ve seen it happen – again, and again – with the research projects we’ve supported since 1979.

We have funded almost 2000 projects since then, in 35 different countries – as a ground-breaking idea can come from anywhere.

This year we’re funding 87 research projects, but every year we receive dozens more applications for exciting and scientifically excellent projects that we would love to be able to support.

Our ambitions as a charity are to fund at least 100 new potential cures every year.

The ideas that light up the room at our Bold Ideas Gathering, the meeting where our Scientific Advisory Committee discuss and prioritise research projects for funding, are those that take an ambitious and daring first step in tackling the most challenging questions in cancer biology.

Dr Zacchigna’s project is one the many innovative projects we fund, and I can’t wait to see the results – not just from their lab over the next few years, but in decades to come as the impact of their work continues.

Lynn Turner is director of research for Worldwide Cancer Research