October 11-17th is Black in Cancer Week! Co-founded this year by Dr. Henry J. Henderson (@DrHJHenderson) and Sigourney Bell (@siggs28), Black in Cancer Week is focused on “strengthening networks and highlighting Black Excellence in cancer research and medicine.” We are taking this week to highlight some articles written by our Black contributors and share the... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Taylor A. Johnson Here at Oncobites, we cover all varieties of cancers, whether they are located in the brain, heart, breast, circulation, or elsewhere. Although we’ve previously discussed ovarian cancer in multiple posts (i.e. Ovarian Cancer and Infections), we have yet to discuss the homologous structure to the ovaries in men;... Continue Reading →
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 →
Reading time: 4 minutes Jessica Desamero With cancer, the environment that surrounds a tumor, or the tumor microenvironment (TME), can be just as important as the tumor itself in terms of cancer progression and drug resistance. How can this be? First, let’s take a look at what the TME is composed of. In a tumor... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Kate Secombe Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a relatively common side-effect of some types of chemotherapy, affecting between 19 to 85% of people. It refers to a few different conditions involving damage to the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system sends signals back to the central nervous system (brain and... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Emily Costa Every spring, researchers, oncologists, policymakers, journalists, advocacy groups, and patients from around the globe gather at AACR, a scientific conference hosted by the American Association for Cancer Research and the largest of its kind. Matching this spectrum of attendees, the conference’s programming covers a wide array of cancer-related topics,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Chris Wang Like Keanu Reeves dodging bullets within The Matrix, cancer cells can dodge even carefully designed anti-cancer agents. Scientists strive to design “silver bullets,” ones which target cancer cells while sparing healthy normal cells. This "silver bullet" approach is appealing to researchers due to the promise of improved therapeutic response... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Garima Khanna Marijuana, a popular plant cultivated throughout the globe has caught the eye of scientists to unravel the mysteries of it’s medicinal properties. The dried buds and leaves derived from Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica have shown potential to cater pain management. While the active cannabinoid properties in marijuana have... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Michael Marand Surgical resection is an important part of nearly any treatment regimen for breast cancer. It is imperative that surgery achieves “clear margins,” meaning there is no cancerous tissue on the outer rim of the mass that was removed. Recall the saying, “close enough only counts in horseshoes and hand... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Diana Moreira The need for new and improved anti-tumor therapies has led the research field to implement different strategies to reduce, and ideally cease, tumor development. With growing publications in the field of cancer metabolism in recent years, different tumor vulnerabilities are being uncovered, increasing the likelihood of finding new therapeutic... Continue Reading →
Reading Time: 7 minutes Josh Ghofrani Mice are the principal model organisms in biomedical research. We rely on mice because of their close genetic and physiologic approximation to humans, as well as their relative ease of care and breeding. No model system is perfect, and many limitations are widely acknowledged in the research community. However,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Andrew C. Griggs, Jordan E. Rogers, Elizabeth H. Lazzara Research Engineering and Applied Collaborations in Healthcare (REACH) Lab Patients with cancer may be at greater risk of contracting or developing complications related to COVID-19. Given the lack of a vaccine or specific antiviral therapy for COVID-19 at this time, the large... Continue Reading →
Significance of Minimal Residual Disease Reading time: 3 minutes Aishwarya Subramanian Leukemia is a condition in which the number of white blood cells increase because of malfunctions in blood-forming tissues. White blood cells that provide immunity to the body and protect it from diseases undergo genetic alterations and mutations causing them to undergo rapid division.... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Aileen I Fernandez When a foreign substance such as a cancer cell presents itself in the human body, it is able to communicate with cells of the human immune system. The cancer cell signals the immune system, telling it “Hey! Pump the brakes!”, thus instructing the immune system to not kill... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Brittany Avin McKelvey Climate change is a global issue with far-reaching effects on society. It is caused partly by greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that trap the sun’s radiation in our atmosphere. While some warming and cooling effects are part of Earth’s natural cycle of climate change, the burning of fossil... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 7 minutes Sara Musetti Disclaimer: This article is based on summaries of academic studies and medical society guidelines. It is not intended as medical advice; if you find yourself needing to seek care during this pandemic, please contact your doctor for a discussion based on your hospital’s resources and your specific needs. The... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Rachel Cherney Six feet. Two meters. This is the length of DNA we have in each one of our cells. That’s almost the height of Michael Jordan! But those six feet of DNA need to fit into a tiny space that is between 5-10 micrometers. To put it into perspective, that's... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Chris Wang Chemotherapy is a mainstay of cancer treatment, yet many times it is temporarily withheld or stopped due to significant toxicity. This is because chemotherapy drugs cannot differentiate between killing cancer cells and killing fast growing healthy cells, such as cells in your bone marrow. These cells divide quickly because... Continue Reading →
This is not a normal week in America, and yet, in many ways, it is. Protesters have taken to the streets across the country and around the world to demand justice for the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, three Black Americans who have been murdered in the past month, two of... Continue Reading →
Larissa Biggers Reading time: 3 minutes A cure for a disease such as malaria, polio, or cancer is a treatment that eliminates it. A cure can work on an individual level or a group level. If a treatment is effective for a group such that no disease is left in the population, the condition is... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Brittany Avin McKelvey Many of us are enticed by the possibility of extending our lives, towards the goal of one day being able to live forever. This wish may be closer to becoming reality with the promise of some research in which the activation of only one enzyme, usually turned off... Continue Reading →
Sara Musetti Estimated reading time: 5 minutes It seems talking about the immune system and how it can fight cancer is all the rage these days, especially here at OncoBites. But talking about it can be tricky, especially because most people seldom think about their immune system. It’s a part of your body, but… which... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Aileen I Fernandez Cancer is a complex disease associated with multiple factors. To fully understand the disease and find treatments, these multiple factors should be addressed. One of the intractable layers associated with this disease is the health disparity. The disparity here refers to a greater disease burden seen in one... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Jessica Desamero Molecules can be portrayed as “ball-and-spring” models, where the balls are atoms and the springs are the chemical bonds that tether them. Just as a spring, the chemical bonds can be moved around in a variety of ways to cause masses to vibrate as well as move differently and... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Kate Secombe Have you ever thought about how the cells in our body die? There are many ways a cell can die due to both external or internal factors, playing a role in keeping the body healthy and removing dangerous cells from the body system. When cells fail to listen to... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Daniel Zhong Before we believe headlines proclaiming “Cancer is cured”, it is crucial to understand that developing a therapy that universally cures all cancers is highly unrealistic as our knowledge surrounding mechanisms of cancer progression advances. While we do have non-curative treatments for some types of cancer such as chemotherapy and... Continue Reading →
MaryAnn Bowyer Reading Time: 3 minutes When we think of cancer cells, we often imagine a mastermind cell that has somehow managed to evade all of our body’s natural defenses as well as even modern day science. However, years of scientific research and publications have shown that the “mastermind” behind this particular cell is, in... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Morgan McSweeney Skin melanoma is the 5th most common type of cancer in the United States. Strikingly, 1 in 5 Americans develop skin cancer by the age of 70, and an average of 2 people die from skin cancer each hour. However, if detected while the tumor is still only present... Continue Reading →
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 →
Reading time: 5 minutes Prathyusha Konda For the past decade, a growing area of cancer research has been focused on cancer immunotherapies. From the Nobel prize-winning checkpoint inhibitor therapy to cancer vaccines, the idea behind immunotherapies is to boost or activate the immune system. While the therapies being developed may be new, the idea behind... Continue Reading →
