The Latest in Cancer Research, simplified
Jason Tetro What causes cancer? It’s a question that has been asked for millennia (Sudhakar, 2009) yet no concrete answer has been found. In the 4th Century BCE, Hippocrates believed the answer lied in the presence of “black bile,” which to him was one of the four major humors in the body. Over the centuries, …
Continue reading "A New Suspect In The Search For The Cause of Cancer"
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 …
Zina McSweeney The consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with worse colon cancer outcomes, according to research published by Brendon Guercio et al. on July 19th, 2018. Among 1,018 patients with stage III colon cancer, researchers found that replacing one 12-ounce sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) with an artificially-sweetened beverage (ASB) was estimated to lead to a …
Manisit Das Not long ago Tamara mentioned in her OncoBites article that it is often hard to determine what factors drive cancer. Even after a mutation responsible for fueling cancer growth is identified, we do not always know how that mutation contributes to tumor formation. Understanding these mechanisms is however quite important. As we gain …
Continue reading "Feeling the ‘heat’ from neighbors: Microenvironment driving cancers in the gut"
Sara Musetti Last week on OncoBites, Beth Rogoski of PhDoodles shared with us the story of liquid biopsies, blood tests that can be used to detect cancer and evaluate treatments. Today, in a follow-up piece, we’ll go into more detail as to what technologies are making their way to market, how liquid biopsies can be …
Tamara Vital By now you’re probably noticing a running theme at OncoBites: cancer is complicated. Cancers have many moving parts, and despite our best efforts it can be difficult to know what factors drive them. Even when we have identified causal mutations in genes, it can be difficult to figure out how these mutations contribute …
Continue reading "Expanding the network: new connections for an old driver in kidney cancer"
