Reading time: 5 minutes Emily Chan During a holiday weekend, I had the chance to see one of the most beloved animals at my local zoo: the koala. Contrary to their adorable exterior, koalas boast strong arms and legs that hook around tree branches, allowing them to scale large eucalyptus trees. Recently, researchers at Institut... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Aishat Motolani We live in an era of catchy headlines. I gasp every time I read a health headline on mainstream news networks. Some thumbnails read thus, “red wine could increase your lifespan,” or “naps are linked to X type of disease.” Naps? I often remark in confusion. I love taking... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 7 minutes Michael Marand In short-distance track competitions, the winner of a race is largely determined by how well the runners take off from the starting blocks. With the athletes only narrowly separated by their top speeds, the initial difficulty of shifting from an immobile crouch to rapid acceleration is an art that... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Patty Spears The applause was thunderous and traveled like a wave across the large auditorium at the end of a 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting Plenary Session talk. It did not stop. The audience stood and kept applauding and reveling in the positive results of a clinical... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Susan Egbert As technology has been advancing exponentially over the years, more efficient diagnostic tools have been developed for cancer detection. Recent studies1,2,3 have shown the need for this advancement, as current diagnostic tools are still not adequate enough to detect cancer. One of the new tools that have been advancing,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Emily Chan With Halloween soon approaching, children and adults everywhere are preparing to disguise themselves in costumes to transform into someone or something else. Unlike the disguises we wear once a year, cells can make continuous strides to transform into malignant cells that metastasize to other areas of the body. Cancer... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Jacqueline Mann In December 2020, less than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to prevent COVID-19. These vaccines work differently from traditional immunizations: they contain a specific sequence of messenger RNA (mRNA) that... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes “It cannot get any better with our three-in-one device…buy one get one free today,” sings my radio as I commute to the lab daily. I nod in agreement to such commercials because I love to do more with less. Currently, many products are often rebranded as multi-purposed because products and services... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Hema Saranya Ilamathi Cancer can develop at any time and in any part of the human body once the conditions are favorable for their growth. They continue to multiply by utilizing nutrients available in their habitat. These cancerous cells form a mass called primary tumors. However, once their resources become limited,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Vicky Tan Cancer severity and therapy responses can be influenced by both the cell of origin and its location. Melanoma is a skin cancer that arises from pigment-producing cells, called melanocytes. Melanoma is predicted to become the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australia, while in the US, 100,000 new cases... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Hannah Young Somatic mutations are changes in DNA that occur as cells in our body divide. They are distinct from germline mutations, which occur in germ cells (e.g. eggs and sperm) and are passed down from parent to child. Both somatic and germline mutations contribute to cancer and aging. While we’ve... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Bhavuk Garg Cancers are characterized by uncontrolled growth and failure of differentiation, whereby cells lose their physiological characteristics and acquire malignant phenotypes, also known as neoplastic properties. Examining the distinct properties of cancer cells and their underlying mechanisms are active areas of investigation. Broadly, these properties are summarized as hallmarks of... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Aishat Motolani The incidence of pancreatic cancer is almost commensurate with its media mentions. As a fan of the wizarding world of the Harry Potter series and the quiz game show Jeopardy, the demise of Professor Snape and Alek Trebek came as a shock. "Neither a magic wand nor an encyclopedia... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Deanna MacNeil One goal in cancer therapy is to strike a balance between treatment efficacy and toxicity. While treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are meant to kill cancer cells, healthy tissues can be adversely affected in the process. Common side effects of systemic cancer treatment occur because treatments work... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Gabby Budziszewski Proteins, the molecular machines that perform functions within our cells to keep us alive, are all encoded in DNA, but only 1-2% of our three billion base pairs of DNA encode proteins. For many years, the other 98-99% of DNA was referred to as “junk” DNA. However, we now... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Susan Egbert Did you know that researchers are trying to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) with cancer treatments? There are plenty of studies in oncology available that range from diagnostic to treatment that are peer-reviewed (experts looking at the articles before publishing). This is useful for AI as the more data that... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Ifeoluwa Oyelade One of the most impactful breakthroughs in cancer research would be to completely eradicate all cancer cells in the body upon treatment, thereby preventing possible cases of cancer relapse. However, the ability of tumor cells to move out of their primary sites to reside in different organs in the... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Michael Marand From a young age, we are taught to protect ourselves from germs. From scrubbing our teeth to washing our hands, the hygienic routines we learned as kids help us steer clear of harmful single-celled organisms. And for good reason – research suggests bacterial infection is a significant risk factor... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Jessica Desamero Breastfeeding is essential for a baby’s first few months and can even reduce a mother’s risk of breast cancer. The exact cause is unclear, but it could be due to the associated hormonal changes that delay the mother’s menstrual cycles. This delay reduces the mother’s lifetime exposure to menstrual... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Mahrukh Fatima Did you know that some animals, like salamanders and axolotls, can regenerate their limbs? They have this spectacular ability due to a small and rare subset of primitive cells called stem cells. These cells have the ability to differentiate into many different types of specialized cells from brain cells... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Kate Secombe You may have read previously on OncoBites about immunotherapies, and the great promise they hold in treating a wide range of cancers. Commonly used immunotherapies include checkpoint inhibitors such as PD-1 or CTLA-4 inhibitors. Here I will be looking at an emerging subset of immunotherapies known as immune agonist... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Bhavuk Garg Bone marrow is soft trabecular tissue nourished by an intensive network of blood vessels. This tissue is found in axial and leg bones of the body. Bone marrow is primarily made up of two types: red bone marrow and yellow bone marrow. Red bone marrow contains stem cells and... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Keighley Reisenauer One of the “hot button” topics right now in the cancer therapeutics industry is precision medicine. This is a practice whereby a tumor’s genetics, immune landscape, and biomarkers are compiled and evaluated holistically in order to more accurately make treatment decisions. Breast cancer especially has benefited from the targeted... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Leandro de Lima Coutinho While it would be miraculous to have a Panacea (or Elixir of Life) that would cure all diseases and prolong life, it took alchemists in the Harry Potter universe to create one. Taking a step away from fiction, it would still be incredible to have one drug... Continue Reading →
Vicky Tan Reading time: 3 minutes Whilst the current attention of many healthcare workers is devoted to battling COVID-19, another epidemic is quietly brewing in the background. Dakota Stephenson is a 15-year old from Sydney, Australia, who was recently admitted into an intensive care unit for three days as her lungs were filling up with... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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