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 →
A Common Denominator That Links All Cancers
Reading time: 4 minutes Aishat Motolani Cancer is a heterogeneous genetic disease notorious for dodging several bullets of treatments. Tumors can develop in different organs and tissues of the body. As a result, there are over 100 types of cancers according to the National Cancer Institute. One of the current approaches pursued to solve cancer... Continue Reading →
Can Eating Plant-based Prevent Cancer?
Reading time: 4 minutes Christina Snyder Cancer is a massive problem that affects almost 2 million new people each year in the U.S. alone. But what if you could drastically decrease your risk for cancer later in life simply by changing your diet? While, unfortunately, there is no single magical fruit that can prevent cancer,... Continue Reading →
Why Can’t I Be in This Clinical Trial?
Reading time: 5 minutes Patty Spears There are many barriers keeping patients out of clinical trials, even if they want to join the clinical trial. There are multiple steps along the way and each step is a hurdle for patients. A patient must first have physical access to the trial (structural barrier). For example, I... Continue Reading →
Is Cancer a Sort of Monster?
Reading time: 4 minutes Leandro de Lima Coutinho It may seem a bit naive to associate cancer with an imaginary creature that is large, ugly, frightening, and often destructive. However, to understand why we would consider cancer as a monster, we need to first revive a creature from Greek mythology and then recall the etymology... Continue Reading →
Is There an App for That? Using Electronic Patient Reported Outcomes in Cancer Treatment
Reading time: 4 minutes Kate Secombe Most cancer treatments can cause side effects during or beyond treatment. While some of these side effects will not be bothersome to a person going through treatment, others may be more painful, annoying, or indicative of a problem that requires medical attention. Previous research has shown that clinicians tend... Continue Reading →
Does Bacterial Infection Lead to Increased Risk of Cancer?
Sohini Basu Roy Reading time: 3 minutes Every year 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections cases occur in the U.S. and more than 35,000 people die due to bacterial infection But one of the main challenges is a consequence resulting from the infection: weakened immune system. This leads to immunodeficiency and thus patients become more prone to... Continue Reading →
Meet the Laser-focused Protein Bulldozers: PROTACs
Reading time: 5 minutes Aishat Motolani Just as bulldozers work to demolish dilapidated buildings or clear weeds on farmlands, PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras (PROTACs) are small bifunctional molecules designed to degrade proteins that are present in excess in diseased conditions. In cancer, these specific proteins are called oncoproteins. Oncoproteins are capable of transforming a normal cell... Continue Reading →
Our Bodies — a Weapon Against Cancer?
Reading time: 5 minutes Mahrukh Fatima Our bodies are quite spectacular and are well-equipped to protect us from most dangers we encounter, both internal and external. The tools our bodies use to protect us against microscopic threats are collectively known as the immune system, and just like tools in a toolbox, the different types of... Continue Reading →
Does HIV Lead to Cancer?
Daniel Zhong Reading time: 3 minutes Roughly 37.7 million individuals on Earth by the end of 2020 have been living with HIV — human immunodeficiency virus — which targets and weakens the human body’s immune system when not properly controlled or treated. As a result, this impaired immune system can cause people to become immunodeficient,... Continue Reading →
Running Interference in Brain Cancer
Reading time: 4 minutes Anthony (Tony) Tao Controlling the genes encoded by our DNA has always been a dream in oncology. Just as our healthy cells rely on genes to properly function, cancer cells depend on our genes to thrive and parasitize our bodies. In the late 90s, a powerful technology was developed called RNA... Continue Reading →
Recurrence of breast cancer: A study of the relationship between ER-positive breast cancer and MSK1 protein
Reading time: 5 minutes Ifeoluwa Oyelade It is no news that breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and the highest cause of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. According to WHO, in 2020, 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer with 685,000 reported mortality. Arguably, the worst news that can be given... Continue Reading →
Improving Prediction of Cardiovascular Disease After Childhood Cancer
Reading time: 4 minutes Clare Meernik 84% of children who are diagnosed with cancer today can expect to live for at least 5 years after their diagnosis. Though the prognosis is favorable for the majority of children--and much improved from a 5-year survival rate of 58% in the mid-1970s--the long-term adverse effects of some cancer... Continue Reading →
Cancer’s Sweet Tooth Can Lead to its Downfall
Reading time: 5 minutes Michael Marand The term cancer research may invoke images of scientists with grand ideas mixing this or that until the next groundbreaking treatment avenue is uncovered. Indeed, discovering new therapeutic approaches has been an important factor in the progress made in the cancer research sphere. However, it is perhaps even more... Continue Reading →
Should We Rely on Robot Radiologists?
Reading time: 3 minutes Nisitha Sengottuvel Can robots accomplish the work of doctors? Some aspects of medicine may be better left to technology: one example includes the reading of mammograms to diagnose breast cancer. Thus far in the history of Oncobites, we have examined various aspects of diagnostics such as molecular vibrations, gold nanoparticles, biomarkers... Continue Reading →
Unlocking Nature’s Cancer Therapies
Reading time: 2 minutes Rachel Cherney Nature is magnificent, simply put. It is indispensable, diverse, and more complex than we currently understand. Its diversity ranges from from the Mantis Shrimp, which can see millions of colors as compared to humans, to the Axolotl, which has the remarkable ability to regenerative any of the limbs. However,... Continue Reading →
Tumor Dormancy – A Case of a “Sleeping” Cell
Reading time: 4 minutes Ifeoluwa Oyelade Pretending to be dead to deceive opponents in fights and strike unexpectedly is a well-known cliche in books and movies. This is an analogy that loosely describes the activities of some dormant tumor cells in cancer treatment. Tumor dormancy has garnered a reasonable amount of buzz in cancer research... Continue Reading →
Freaky Friday: What happens when cancer cells swap mitochondria?
Keighley Reisenauer Reading time: 3 minutes Think back to 2003, when Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan swapped bodies as mother and daughter in the flick Freaky Friday. While their bodies looked the same, their behaviors changed as each brought their own personality to the other’s lives. Movies love this idea of swapping bodies, brains,... Continue Reading →
Meeting the Needs Of Cancer Survivors: A Growing Healthcare Imperative
Reading time: 6 minutes Kate Gavaghan Being diagnosed with cancer is terrifying, and going through treatment is physically and emotionally challenging. So many patients are justifiably focused on “getting to the end” that they can be a little blindsided by survivorship. It’s not really a return to normal life, or the life one had before... Continue Reading →
Neurogenesis in cancer: How cancer cells metastasize using neurons as guides
Reading time: 4 minutes Suchitra Mitra Majority of cancer associated deaths occur from metastasis, when cells from the primary tumor migrate to a distant site within the body. The migration of cancer cells usually occurs via three routes — direct invasion of surrounding tissues, the circulatory system (ie, blood), and the lymphatic system. Recent developments... Continue Reading →
Integrating Race, Ethnicity, and Now Ancestry Into Cancer Research—Why Does it Matter?
Reading time: 4 minutes Aileen I Fernandez Cancer health disparities are prevalent in the United States and are defined as “adverse differences between certain population groups in cancer measures”. It is well known that there are variations in cancer burden associated with racial/ethnic identity and that this is due to many factors. Among these are... Continue Reading →
Knowing the Result Before the Test – ‘zAavatars’ Predicting Therapeutic Responses in Cancer Patients
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes Darshak Bhatt Wouldn’t it be nice if a cancer patient was given therapy only if it was going to work? Although it seems like a no-brainer, many patients undergo therapy without knowing how good the chances are for a successful outcome. Reasons for this uncertainty depend on the type and... Continue Reading →
Immune-related Adverse Events: A Blessing or a Curse for Cancer Immunotherapy?
Reading time: 7 minutes Aishat Motolani You have most likely heard of several branded FDA-approved drugs during TV commercials and sighed, “Ah! not again with this rhythmic list of symptoms.” Well, some of those symptoms may have included immune-related adverse events (IRAEs). iRAEs are composed of an array of side effects that are reminiscent of... Continue Reading →
Cancer Research and Care Under the Biden Administration
Reading time: 5 minutes Michael Marand In the third most-viewed TED talk of all time, Simon Sinek explained: people do not care what you do, they care why you do it. He asserted great leaders inspire action by communicating their why. For many of us involved in cancer research or cancer care, our work comes... Continue Reading →
Are Clinical Trials in Oncology Biased?
Reading time: 3 minutes Varshit Dusad Randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) are an important part of medical studies. Properly supervised trials act as the source of evidence for the safety and efficacy of new drugs, therapies, and medical devices. Hence, it is imperative that clinical trials are designed, conducted, and analysed in a robust and... Continue Reading →
Targeting cancer’s sweet spots
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Payal Yokota One of the main differences between a rapidly dividing cancer cell and a normal cell is that the cancer cells rely on glycolysis followed by lactic acid fermentation, rather than oxidative phosphorylation. This effect is called the Warburg effect, one we have previously discussed in the context of... Continue Reading →
AlphaFold: A game changer in cancer?
Reading time: 4 minutes Chamath Chandrasekera Proteins are the molecular machines that perform nearly every bodily function including contracting muscles, digesting food, and healing wounds. They also provide structural support by reinforcing the shape of cells and tissues. So how do proteins go from a string of amino acids to a 3D structure with a... Continue Reading →
A Link Between Neurodegeneration and Cancer
Reading time: 5 minutes Jessica Desamero Cancer and neurodegenerative disease (a group of disorders that involve progressive degeneration of the central nervous system) are two very serious and distinct ailments. The basis of their development is distinctly different, with hallmarks of cancer centering around abnormally prolonging cell life and hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease centering around... Continue Reading →
Progress in Screening: The Key To Lower Colorectal Cancer Mortality
Reading time: 6 minutes Kate Gavaghan Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common form of cancer in the US, and the second most common cause of cancer death. It’s estimated that in 2020, approximately 148,000 individuals were diagnosed with CRC and about 53,200 died. The good news is that the incidence of CRC has... Continue Reading →
In sickness and in health: Myc and Max
Reading time: 4 minutes Suchitra Mitra Normal cells grow, age, and ultimately die to be replaced by new cells. Cancer cells, on the other hand, experience cell cycle malfunctions and grow out of control to become invasive, spreading undesirably and harmfully. This anomalous cell proliferation is a consequence of genetic alterations, or changes in the... Continue Reading →
The circulating tumor DNA: a promising cancer biomarker
Reading time: 6 minutes Aishat Motolani What if I say a floating DNA in the blood could broadcast a glimpse of a diseased system’s future, particularly that of cancer? Diagnosing cancer commonly involves the use of invasive procedures, such as tumor tissue biopsy. This involves the examination of tissues extracted from a primary or metastatic... Continue Reading →
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