Reading time: 8 minutes Nicholas A. Egan Obesity is a rising global health epidemic, with the number of obese adults doubling since the 1990s and the number of adolescents living with obesity quadrupling. This amounts to one in every eight people in the world living with obesity. Obesity comes with myriad other health issues. Specifically,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Brittane L. Strahan MSN, RN, CCRP The treatment of solid tumors is evolving constantly and rapidly in the vast oncology clinical research landscape. Though huge strides have been made in the treatment of even difficult tumor types (such as small cell lung cancer), there is still much work left to do.... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Aishat Motolani Cetuximab, Panitumumab, Tucatinib, and Ipilimumab, just to name a few, are examples of drugs approved for metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) over the past two decades. However, due to the poor outcomes of some of these drugs in mCRC patients, researchers are exploring new treatment combinations to optimize efficacy. This... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Spencer Maingi Identifying IDH mutations and their function In 2008, researchers studying brain tumors discovered something surprising. Patients with “secondary glioblastoma”, a uniformly lethal cancer that arises from a prior, less aggressive brain tumor (“low-grade glioma”), frequently had mutations in their tumor in the gene isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1).1 Even more... Continue Reading →
Reading Time: 4 minutes Chris Wang The liver is a uniquely important organ in your body. It filters all of your blood, produces bile to digest foods/carry away waste, and can even regenerate even after 90% has been removed. Unfortunately, the liver is also an organ where many cancers metastasize to. Colorectal cancer in particular... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Maya Razmi Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide - in 2022, there were about 20 million new cases of cancer and 9.7 million cancer-related deaths. Though some individuals have access to treatment, many may not be so fortunate. Vulnerable populations are particularly susceptible to cancer, as they... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Karli Norville In 2021, lung cancer was ranked as the number one cause of cancer deaths in the United States (1). The American Cancer Society reports that the 5-year survival rate of all Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) patients is 26% (2). A recent study of the cancer drug Lorlatinib announced... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Anthony Tao Smallpox was once a devastating disease, speculated to have incited numerous plagues throughout history including the Plague of Athens in 430 BC and the epidemic that decimated the Aztec population of the once great city of Tenochtitlan in 1520. In the 18th century, 400,000 deaths a year were attributed... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 7 minutes Shan Grewal Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the worst diagnoses a patient can receive today. The median survival of this cancer is just under 15 months, meaning half of patients with GBM will pass away within 1.5 years. Only 4% of patients reach the 5-year mark.1 GBM has left an... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Maya Razmi Understanding depression in cancer patients is crucial for holistic care. This study highlights the prevalence of depression using the Beck Depression Inventory-II, emphasizing the need for integrated mental health support in oncology. Oftentimes, when we think of oncology research, we think of novel diagnostics and therapeutics. However, cancer is... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 8 minutes Colin Ong For most of us, stress is an inevitable facet of life. Any internal or external stimulus such as encountering a bear while hiking will trigger stress in our bodies. Remarkably, our bodies respond through a series of orchestrated biochemical and physiological changes as a way of coping with stress.... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Hema Saranya Ilamathi It’s Monday morning! The alarm goes off, and your mind immediately floods with thoughts: meetings with the boss, deadlines to meet, the week’s workload, and the rush to get to work on time. The stress is already kicking in—sound familiar?. In a competitive and fast-paced world, stress has... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Anthony Tao Sunny weather can make the difference between a bleak and mundane work day versus a day filled with joy and festivity. People generally feel better when the sun's out. Foods taste better, music sounds livelier, and the air feels more hopeful. And the need for hope is perhaps most... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Sara Musetti Jenkins, PhD Being diagnosed with cancer is one of the scariest things to ever happen to many people. Regardless of whether it comes suddenly and without warning or after waiting, agonizingly, for test results, it is nearly impossible to prepare for the way it impacts you. Many patients find... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Keighley Reisenauer, Ph.D Chat Generative Pre‐trained Transformer (ChatGPT; OpenAI, San Francisco, CA) and other artificial intelligence (AI)-based generative software have taken hold within social media and creative spheres, to both the delight and annoyance of the users within those spaces. Initially, outputs were flawed or, in some cases, completely incorrect, leading... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Yousra Iftequar You know what they say, “It takes two flints to make a fire.” Researchers have exactly put that into action and have made an effort to combine these two revolutionary techniques. WHAT IS CAR T-CELL IMMUNOTHERAPY? Immunotherapy utilizing the body's immune system has emerged as a promising new approach... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Colette Bilynsky A significant portion of my PhD research was related to colorectal cancer (CRC), so I had seen in the academic literature that the incidence rate of CRC was increasing for people under 50 years of age. Despite this, I was still surprised when on my social media I started... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Colette Bilynsky The wonders of cellular therapies and immunotherapies have been often discussed here on Oncobites. But one of the challenges here is that these strategies are dependent on immune cells' ability to reach tumors and still function. However, tumors will often try to evade and stop the immune system from... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Anthony Tao The modern computer has become a powerful part of society's infrastructure. Among millions of other things, computers are critical for facilitating financial services, research, communications, and politics. However, we can all perhaps agree that one of their LEAST important functions is the ability to recognize cats. However, in 2012,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Karli Norville Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been so impactful in the treatment of cancer in recent years that the basic research supporting their development was the subject of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1). Despite their clinical success, the occurrence of immune-related adverse events (irAEs) within a... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 7 minutes Gracie Jennah Mead Introduction Macrophages are an important part of the innate immune system. Within the innate immune system, which comprises more indiscriminate strategies that protect us from pathogens in general, macrophages engulf and break down pathogens. Macrophages are a diverse cell as they can regulate tissue development and tissue repair... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Yonika Larasati Since the advent of antibiotics more than one century ago, this class of drugs has tremendously changed humanity. In addition to treating bacteria-caused infectious diseases, antibiotics enable modern medical procedures, such as open-heart surgery and organ transplantation. Antibiotics are also essential for cancer patients. Cancer patients often face an... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Anthony Tao The science of the brain has made strides since the 17th century when French philosopher Renes Descartes postulated that nerves communicate by pushing air through tiny tubes. Over a century later, it was biologist Luigi Galvani who, by electrocuting frogs, suggested that neurons talk not through air, but through... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Jessica Desamero, PhD Parasites, such as flatworms and amoeba, are like alien invaders: they live on or inside a host organism to obtain food and can cause the host much harm. For instance, they can cause parasitic diseases with severe symptoms, some of which are fatal. Similarly, cancer cells are invasive... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Mia Hubert Radiation therapy has been a critical tool in the battle against cancer. Following the discovery of X-rays and their cytotoxic potential, radiation therapy was quickly employed to treat skin and breast cancers in the early 20th century1. Today, radiation therapy is effective in controlling or even curing various types... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Eoghan McGrath As a younger man peering across the kitchen table at my father’s scalp, I wondered if I was catching a glimpse of my own follicular future in its shiny freckled portents. Well, a decade, a degree in genetics, and a PhD in biochemistry later, I see my own scalp... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 8 minutes Colette Bilynsky The number of people who will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime is growing, with estimates saying that by 2030, more than 26 million people worldwide will be affected by some type of cancer [1]. However, as noted throughout Oncobites, treatments are continually improving, resulting in increased patient... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Shan Grewal Cancer has long been a formidable adversary in the world of medicine, but recent advancements in the field of immunotherapy have offered new hope in the battle against this complex disease. Immunotherapy is a revolutionary approach that harnesses the body's immune system to target and eliminate cancer cells. One... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Patty Spears For many years there has been a lot of talk about the promise of using a mere blood sample to detect cancer in your body. There are many different approaches and tests that have been developed. One type of test coming to the forefront looks for circulating tumor DNA... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Hema Saranya Ilamathi It's seven o'clock in the morning! A bright light hits my face, and I awaken before the alarm clock starts buzzing. Did you know humans have an inbuilt biological clock known as the circadian rhythm? Light stimulates this 24-hour central clock in the brain. In general, photoreceptors in... Continue Reading →
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