Reading time: 4 minutes Shaye Hagler For those of you whose lives have been impacted by cancer, you might have heard of the term “metastasis.” We call cancer metastatic when it breaks off from the initial tumor and travels to other organs. You might also have heard it being referred to before as “stage 4... Continue Reading →
Physical Education: The Anatomy of a Tumor
Reading time: 4 minutes Shaye Hagler Last spring, Sara introduced some of the ways tumors avoid being killed by both our own bodies’ defenses and the various treatments we throw at them; if you’ve kept up since then, you’ve read a lot about cancer biology and a tumor’s ability to send out signals to other cells... Continue Reading →
Predicting the future: when cancer drugs only work for some patients
Reading time: 5 minutes Shaye Hagler The discovery of accelerators and brakes in our immune system in the early 1990s was fundamental to designing the cancer immunotherapy platforms we use today, which is why it won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. Now, immune checkpoint inhibitors like anti-PD-1 can work in tandem with... Continue Reading →
Can mental state affect tumor growth? The link between psychology, immunology, and oncology
Shaye Hagler At Oncobites, we’ve been talking a lot about the role of immunity in cancer. Understanding the immune system is vital to understanding both what drives cancer and what protects us against it. One of the biggest paradoxes in cancer research is that immune system activation is important in fighting cancer via a process... Continue Reading →