Here at OncoBites, a team of cancer professionals and advocates has gathered to share cutting-edge research with a non-specialist audience. We understand that jargon and isolated professional communities have made science feel inaccessible to most people, even people considering the field. In addition, paywalls on articles can make trying to investigate topics alone a challenge.... Continue Reading →
Getting Cancer Treatment Right: when more is not always better
Reading time: 7 minutes Patty Spears There is a lot of effort to find new drugs to treat cancer. When a new drug works well, we all cheer when it is approved and then use the new drug the same way in all patients. Then we move to the next new drug. But, should we... Continue Reading →
Cancer’s Got Nerve
Reading time: 4 minutes Nisitha Sengottuvel Cancer’s got nerve. We began discussing this earlier in the month with a blog post by Katelyn Fleishem. While neuronal activity has been implicated in the progression of tumor progression in prostate cancer, stomach cancer, colon cancers among others, the mechanisms of what role these neurons play are just... Continue Reading →
PROTACs: Building better therapies
Reading time: 5 minutes Tamara Vital How do you stop an accident from happening? You could try to prevent the conditions that contribute to accidents by establishing rules that encourage and reward caution and safe behavior. On the road, licensing laws, traffic lights, and speed limits set the rules of the road, and those who... Continue Reading →
Thank You Sports
Reading time: 4 minutes Taylor A. Johnson As we proceed through the fall season, we can enjoy the changes in weather, the various holidays, and the many offerings the sports world has to offer us. For the past few years, we have even been treated to the rare Sports Equinox; a day where four major... Continue Reading →
The Other EMT: Exploring the controversial driver of metastasis
Reading time: 5 minutes Keighley Reisenauer Google “EMT,” and you’re likely to see images of paramedics and ambulances. However, there is another EMT that plays a much different role in disease and illness. Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is normally associated with processes such as wound healing and development. Cancer hijacks EMT to participate in... Continue Reading →
A Profile of Electric Fields in Cancer Therapeutics: Part 2- Irreversible Electroporation Therapy
Reading time: 4 minutes Michael Marand In my last article, A Profile of Electric Fields in Cancer Therapeutics, I discussed Optune System, an electric field therapy for glioblastoma that disrupts cancer cell division and results in extended patient survival. I also presented an overview of some other potential applications of electric fields in cancer therapeutics,... Continue Reading →
Exercise as Cancer Therapy
Reading time: 3 minutes Larissa Biggers You have probably heard that exercise can ward off all sorts of health problems, including type 2 diabetes, stroke, and even cancer. But did you know that it can aid in recovery and even prevent the spread of metastatic colorectal cancer? Exercise and cancer progression Current research out of... Continue Reading →
Finding a Cure to Aging and Cancer?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Daniel Zhong Imagine this scenario: You are 90 years old, with gray hair and wrinkled skin. You always carry around a walking cane everywhere you go because the slightest movements from sitting down on a chair to brushing your teeth in the morning cause you tremendous pain in your joints, muscles,... Continue Reading →
Using Oncolytic Viruses to Fight Cancers
Reading time: 5 minutes Payal Yokota Can viruses be heroes? It is well-known that some viruses can cause severe infections in the body. However, when modified in the correct way, these small molecular entities can be used as an additional arsenal in the immune tool bag, to kill even bigger and scarier enemies… such as... Continue Reading →
Making New Connections: Possible Cross-Talk Between Tumors and the Brain
Reading time: 3 minutes Kaitlyn Felsheim The nervous system is integral for communication between the brain and the rest of the body. It is responsible for relaying messages to breathe, eat, feel, blink, and perform other vital tasks. Neurons play a huge role in tissue development and specification, and it turns out that cancer cells... Continue Reading →
Repurposing FDA approved drugs for cancer therapy
Reading time: 2 minutes Rachel Cherney *This article does not take the place of professional medical advice. Consult with your doctor* One of the most limiting aspects of drug development is the time it takes to design, optimize, and implement new drugs, which in turn limits patient treatment and survival. Unfortunately, for patients suffering from... Continue Reading →
Understanding the heterogeneity of triple-negative breast cancer to develop targeted therapies
Reading time: 3 minutes Aishwarya Subramanian Breast cancer has shown to be a really aggressive condition. About 12% of the women in the US are known to develop invasive breast cancer, where the disease spreads into surrounding healthy tissues [a]. Now it is well established that breast cancer is a very heterogeneous disease. Genome studies... Continue Reading →
Ulcers after Cancer Therapy – New Directions
Reading time: 5 minutes Kate Secombe Cancer treatment- it’s not fun! The treatment can take hours in the hospital, it makes you feel fatigued and has a range of difficult side-effects, including nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and memory problems. But today, I want to focus on one, in particular, mucositis, and look at the research... Continue Reading →
Many Anticancer Targets Could Be A Mirage
Reading time: 4 minutes Kedar Puvar Designing new anticancer compounds is often a deliberate process, where the mechanism of action involves the blocking of a certain target, like a receptor or other cellular protein. Researchers would then optimize potential leads until a potent and effective drug is ready for clinical trials. This pipeline is considered... Continue Reading →
Taking immunotherapy to heart: CAR-T cell therapy against cardiac fibrosis
Reading time: 4 minutes Tara Fernandez Originally designed to treat cancer, a new study shows genetically-engineered T-cells could also be a game-changer for treating heart disease. In a world first, a recent study has uncovered a new use for an approved cancer therapy - for fixing broken hearts. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson... Continue Reading →
Overcoming the Limitations of CAR-T Therapy: Relapse
Reading time: 4 minutes Alex S. Woodell In my previous article, we weathered the cytokine storm, a deadly immune response that can occur following chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy. Despite this risk, CAR-T therapy is quite effective in treating blood cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Unfortunately, not all patients respond favorably... Continue Reading →
The Gender Dilemma
Reading time: 3 minutes Bekah Schulz It is well known that biological sex is an important factor in certain types of cancer. Obvious cancers that fall into this category are breast, prostate, uterine, and cervical cancer. These depend on sex-specific organs, as well as hormone levels, that vary between men and women. A previous Oncobites... Continue Reading →
Obesity-related cancers are on the rise
Reading time: 4 minutes Morgan McSweeney Did you know that there is a link between excess weight and increased risk of getting cancer? The International Agency for Research on Cancer has recognized a link between being overweight and having an increased risk of cancer in 13 sites of the body. Strikingly, the CDC reported that... Continue Reading →
BiTE Molecules for Cancer Therapy
Reading time: 3 minutes Aishwarya Subramanian Cancer immunotherapy has gained a lot of traction in the last few years, as several novel therapeutics have made their way into the clinic. Among these new therapeutics, bispecific antibodies are some of the most unique. Unlike traditional antibodies, which have two arms that bind to the same molecule,... Continue Reading →
Immune-Stimulating Implants- Slow But Steady Fighters Against Cancer
Reading time- 4 minutes Sara Musetti The overwhelming majority of cancer “breakthroughs” that get reported on are expensive, state-of-the-art therapies that rely more and more on deeper and deeper knowledge of tumors. And those are extremely important therapies. However, these shiny discoveries tend to hide an interesting fact: our best cancer treatment is also our... Continue Reading →
Your Health Plan Affects Your Access to Cancer Care
Reading time: 3 minutes Manisit Das It is said that cancer is a great equalizer. Unfortunately, however, the same can’t be said about cancer care. Where you live, how much money you make, and the kind of health plan you have can determine if you will receive the care you need to manage your cancer... Continue Reading →
A new multi-pronged approach to cancer vaccination
Reading time: 4 minutes Taylor B. Poston, Ph.D., M.P.H. Most tumors do not respond to T-cell based immunotherapies, but the explanation for this phenomenon has been unclear. Researchers have speculated that there could be insufficient priming of anti-tumor T cells, or if T cells are primed, they are unable to recognize and eradicate the tumor.... Continue Reading →
A Profile of Electric Fields in Cancer Therapeutics
Reading time: 5 minutes Michael Marand For decades, cancer therapy has been dominated by surgical resection, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. But each of these methods comes with its limitations. Surgery fails when there are scattered, small bits of tumor that escape to other areas of the body, called metastases. Radiation therapy fails when said metastases... Continue Reading →
DNA G-Quadruplexes: Special Secondary Structures with Surprising Anticancer Implications
Reading time: 5 minutes Jessica Desamero From the start, our mission here at OncoBites has been to share the complicated nature of cancer with our readers and to shed light on breakthroughs in understanding and treating the disease. One of our biggest messages has been that “cancer” is really a family of different but related... Continue Reading →
Tomosynthesis: The Latest in Breast Cancer Imaging
Reading time: 4 minutes Taylor A. Johnson Here at OncoBites, we have covered multiple advancements in the imaging and diagnosis of cancer. These have included isotonic labeling to detect the cancer progression, liquid biopsies for uncovering tumor profiles, and even artificial intelligence for interpreting images. In addition, several aspects of breast cancer, ranging from new... Continue Reading →
Listen to me!
When patients volunteer to participate in a clinical trial, their voices should be heard. Reading time: 7 minutes Patty Spears A recent study (Nyrop et. al. 2019) looked at how clinicians and patients reported numbness and tingling in the patient’s hands and feet (peripheral neuropathy) after getting chemotherapy for breast cancer. They call this chemotherapy... Continue Reading →
Two New Cancer-Fighting Compounds, Brought to You by Mushrooms
Reading time: 3 minutes Kedar Puvar At first glance, mushrooms, being immobile and nutritious, seem to be rather unassuming. Why, then, would you want to turn to mushrooms of all things as a source of new medicines? It turns out that they make up for their evolutionary weaknesses with a powerful toolbox of molecular defenses... Continue Reading →
Sniffing out Cancer
Reading time: 4 minutes Rachel Cherney Early cancer detection is critical for increasing patient survivability; however, current methods for early detection are costly and often inaccurate. It is of great importance to find other, more cost effective and accurate methods for early cancer detection, and to do this, we may need to turn to new... Continue Reading →
The Rundown on Roundup: A Cancer-Causing Weedkiller?
Reading time: 4 minutes Ariana Cardillo If you’ve been to the Midwest, it’s hard to miss the endless fields dedicated to the agriculture industry. If you live there, you are accustomed to the growing cycles and crop rotations of the fields. You probably are even desensitized to the massive machinery used to maintain these crops.... Continue Reading →
Pembrolizumab – the miraculous drug
Reading time: 5 minutes Varshit Dusad A cancer diagnosis is generally perceived to be a death sentence. With millions of people dying of cancer every year, this does not seem to be at all outrageous. However, researchers all over the world, in academia and industry alike, have been relentlessly pursuing novel therapies and drugs to... Continue Reading →
