Reading time: 7 minutes Lubna Najm Ovarian cancer is one of the top ten most common malignancies to affect women and females worldwide (NIH National Cancer Institute, 2025; Wang et al., 2025), with a 51.6% five-year survival rate (NIH National Cancer Institute, 2025). Named the ‘silent killer’ amongst women-prevalent diseases because its symptoms are either... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Dolores Mruk, PhD Cancer treatments have come a long way since the early 1900s, evolving from chemotherapy and radiotherapy to more targeted interventions. One promising approach involves the use of bispecific antibodies (bsAbs)—engineered molecules that help in fighting cancer. Today, these immunotherapies are being studied across different malignancies, with a particular... 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: 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: 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 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 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: 6 minutes Gracie Jennah Mead Introduction Exhausted T cells (Tex) were first discovered during chronic viral infections whereby the CD8 T cells (which are a type of immune cell that initiates killing of virally infected cells and cancerous cells) persist but can no longer clear the pathogen, this was first evident in HIV... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Mallory Kane The immune system is the first line of defense in detecting and destroying cancer cells. Several mechanisms are in place to prevent and slow cancer growth. However, cancerous cells often can avoid destruction by the immune system. These cells may contain genetic mutations that make them invisible to immune... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Colette Bilynsky New treatment strategies are almost constantly being tested in pre-clinical research and clinical trials, with many of them outlined in various OncoBites articles. This is incredibly important work as groundbreaking treatment strategies like CAR-T therapy have the capacity to radically improve patient outcomes. CAR-T therapy takes the patient's own... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Anthony Tao Bacteria are not often given the respect they sometimes deserve. People tend to consider them as foreign harbingers of plagues, colds, and rashes ‒ unwanted invaders that our immune systems are uniquely tasked to deport. Of course, it is very well accepted now that many of these microbes indeed... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Indiwari Gopallawa After years of seminal research work, mRNA technology got its moment as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, mRNA-based cancer vaccines remain a relatively new and untapped class of vaccines that show great potential. The enthusiasm for this novel technology has been increasing due to recently published experimental... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Susan Egbert Pediatric cancer is a broad term that refers to cancers originating in children younger than 18. There are different types of pediatric cancer, but they all fall into one of two categories: solid tumors and leukemia. Solid tumors are cancers arising from cells in the body's tissues. These tumors... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Indiwari Gopallawa Cancer is the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular diseases in the United States and has a major impact on society. Lung cancer is the second most common cancer type and is associated with lower survival rates and higher cancer-related deaths, accounting for 25% of all cancer-related deaths... Continue Reading →
Colette Bilynsky CAR-T cell therapy is widely available in the United States, with 6 FDA-approved formulations, and has been previously discussed on Oncobites. However, a new clinical trial using the CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) technology is underway, but using macrophages instead of T-Cells in the hope of treating more types of cancer. But let’s take... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Hema Saranya Ilamathi Beep! Beep! There goes the metal scanner in the airport. Oops! I realized that I forgot to take out the key chain from my pocket. Similar to the metal detection system, our body has a highly vigilant surveillance system called immune cells that constantly scan for the presence... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Kate Secombe You may have read previously on OncoBites about immunotherapies, and the great promise they hold in treating a wide range of cancers. Commonly used immunotherapies include checkpoint inhibitors such as PD-1 or CTLA-4 inhibitors. Here I will be looking at an emerging subset of immunotherapies known as immune agonist... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Mahrukh Fatima Our bodies are quite spectacular and are well-equipped to protect us from most dangers we encounter, both internal and external. The tools our bodies use to protect us against microscopic threats are collectively known as the immune system, and just like tools in a toolbox, the different types of... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 7 minutes Aishat Motolani You have most likely heard of several branded FDA-approved drugs during TV commercials and sighed, “Ah! not again with this rhythmic list of symptoms.” Well, some of those symptoms may have included immune-related adverse events (IRAEs). iRAEs are composed of an array of side effects that are reminiscent of... Continue Reading →
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Payal Yokota One of the main differences between a rapidly dividing cancer cell and a normal cell is that the cancer cells rely on glycolysis followed by lactic acid fermentation, rather than oxidative phosphorylation. This effect is called the Warburg effect, one we have previously discussed in the context of... 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 →
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: 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: 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 →
Reading time: 3 minutes Natasha Vinod In 2018, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the inventors of immune checkpoint blockade therapy, a “game-changing” technology that initiated a paradigm shift in cancer management. Checkpoint blockade therapy works by unleashing the immune surveillance against cancer by blocking the “natural brakes” (checkpoints) in the... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Aishwarya Subramanian At Oncobites we've covered the exciting emerging field of immunotherapy to treat cancer, some of which include PROTACs and BiTE molecules . Recently, significant advances have been made when trying to come up with cutting edge ideas for cancer treatment. With the recent changes in the landscape of cancer... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Payal Yokota Can viruses be heroes? It is well-known that some viruses can cause severe infections in the body. However, when modified in the correct way, these small molecular entities can be used as an additional arsenal in the immune tool bag, to kill even bigger and scarier enemies… such as... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Alex S. Woodell In my previous article, we weathered the cytokine storm, a deadly immune response that can occur following chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy. Despite this risk, CAR-T therapy is quite effective in treating blood cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Unfortunately, not all patients respond favorably... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Aishwarya Subramanian Cancer immunotherapy has gained a lot of traction in the last few years, as several novel therapeutics have made their way into the clinic. Among these new therapeutics, bispecific antibodies are some of the most unique. Unlike traditional antibodies, which have two arms that bind to the same molecule,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Taylor B. Poston, Ph.D., M.P.H. Most tumors do not respond to T-cell based immunotherapies, but the explanation for this phenomenon has been unclear. Researchers have speculated that there could be insufficient priming of anti-tumor T cells, or if T cells are primed, they are unable to recognize and eradicate the tumor.... Continue Reading →
OncoBites 