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 →
Stakeholders in commercialization of oncology
Reading time: 6 minutes Varshit Dusad Oncology is a vibrant research area with many exciting discoveries unfolding every year, each emerging from research labs all over the world. However, the road from innovations in the lab to successful commercial realization in the real world is long and challenging. For a new therapy and drug to... Continue Reading →
Gene therapy vs Cancer: A promising yet challenging road
Reading time: 5 minutes Varshit Dusad Gene therapy has rapidly become one of the most promising new medical developments of our time. It has significant advantages over traditional therapies including the potential for one-time dosage instead of recurring treatment and higher specificity compared to traditional chemotherapy. Cancer is a genetic disease! It occurs when normal... 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 →
Cancer and Heredity! Watch out for your bloodline
Reading time: 5 minutes Varshit Dusad There is no denying that cancer is a genetic disease and genetics is hereditary. So is cancer hereditary as well? Unfortunately, the answer is yes! If your ancestors had cancer, you have a higher risk to get cancer than someone who does not have cancer in their family history... Continue Reading →
Maternal Cancer and its Impact on Infants
Reading time: 4 minutes Varshit Dusad Cancer by no stretch of the imagination is a rare disease. It affects a significant population worldwide, and every year millions of dollar are spent investigating the causes of cancer and searching for a potential cure. However, a rarely discussed topic is the adverse impact on the health of... Continue Reading →
Isotopic labeling: A peek inside cancer cells
Reading time: 4 minutes Varshit Dusad Studying the growth of the tumor is very important to devise an effective treatment against cancer. Often cancer tissues are buried deep inside the body and we need diagnostic methods that can tell us about their progression accurately without harming the body while not losing the accuracy. Therefore, invasive... Continue Reading →
Bacteria in Cancer therapy: Friend or Foe?
Reading time: 5 minutes Varshit Dusad Bacteria are our unallied neighbors, which depending upon circumstances chooses to be our friend or foe. While bacteria such as E.coli have often been the workhorses for molecular biology studies, they have other uses as well. Surprisingly, they have enormous potential for cancer therapy. No, I am not talking... Continue Reading →
A CAR-T therapy without the T-cells
Varshit Dusad Imagine a dystopian world. Here, some citizens of an otherwise well-functioning state have gone rogue and are running an anti-national agenda. They are always plundering the natural resources meant to be evenly distributed among the population. They are quite cunning as they start slowly by deviating from the laws of their natural order... Continue Reading →
When math meets lab: The power of modeling in cancer biology
Varshit Dusad 'All models are wrong, some are useful!' - George Box The advancement of biological research relies on understanding how the different moving parts interact with each other, forming an integrated system. To better understand a system we often resort to models which help us develop a logical framework of these interactions, offering us... Continue Reading →
The curious case of cancer metabolism
Varshit Dusad Methotrexate is one of the earliest drug discovered for treatment of cancer. It is listed by WHO as one of the essential medicines and has been used to treat various forms of cancer. Methotrexate has had such broad success across cancer subtypes due to its unique mechanism of action. Inside tumors, it attacks... Continue Reading →