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: 8 minutes Colin Ong Altered Metabolism in Cancer Cells Metabolic rewiring is one of the key features of cancer cells1. These cells display altered metabolism as a way to meet their constant energy needs. This increased energy requirement is essential for the continuous proliferation and survival of these cells within the tumor microenvironment.... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Mariella Careaga Finding effective ways to treat different types of cancer has been a long-standing goal for scientists all over the world. In this quest, many have turned their attention to vaccines. Originally created to fight microbes that cause infections, the vaccine's ability to stimulate immune responses specifically against certain antigens... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Chris Wang Since its discovery in 1982, therapies targeting the mutated KRAS oncogene have long eluded cancer researchers. KRAS has been considered an undruggable target for decades due to lack of a binding pocket where a drug could fit.1 However, the need for KRAS targeting therapies is severely needed as KRAS... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Mikayla Sheild Cancer is a disease that has long been around, with the earliest known documented human case dating back over 5000 years ago in Ancient Egypt. [1] Millions of people around the world deal with it on a daily basis, whether as a patient themself or as a caregiver of... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Joycelyn Ghansah, MA, MPH Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), or neuropathic pain (pain due to nerve damage), is a common type of pain experienced by cancer patients, especially those receiving treatment. It happens due to the side effects of cancer drugs, which affect 19% to over 85% of patients. CIPN mostly causes... 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: 6 minutes Brittane L. Strahan MSN, RN, CCRP The treatment of solid tumors is evolving constantly and rapidly in the vast oncology clinical research landscape. Though huge strides have been made in the treatment of even difficult tumor types (such as small cell lung cancer), there is still much work left to do.... Continue Reading →
Reading Time: 4 minutes Chris Wang The liver is a uniquely important organ in your body. It filters all of your blood, produces bile to digest foods/carry away waste, and can even regenerate even after 90% has been removed. Unfortunately, the liver is also an organ where many cancers metastasize to. Colorectal cancer in particular... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Colette Bilynsky The wonders of cellular therapies and immunotherapies have been often discussed here on Oncobites. But one of the challenges here is that these strategies are dependent on immune cells' ability to reach tumors and still function. However, tumors will often try to evade and stop the immune system from... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Hema Saranya Ilamathi It's seven o'clock in the morning! A bright light hits my face, and I awaken before the alarm clock starts buzzing. Did you know humans have an inbuilt biological clock known as the circadian rhythm? Light stimulates this 24-hour central clock in the brain. In general, photoreceptors in... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Kelsey Woodruff Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are a rare population of cells that have the capacity to differentiate into one of the many types of blood cells that keep your body healthy. Through a complex series of signaling events and carefully timed cell divisions, these cells repopulate the entire blood compartment.... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Rapon Félicités While the degradation of disease-causing proteins [1] is now possible thanks to targeted protein degradation (TPD) technologies such as PROTACs [2], new targeted protein stabilization (TPS) technologies called DUBTACs [3] have been designed to stabilize and restore proteins that may promote cell proliferation when aberrantly degraded. Tumor suppressing proteins... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Tala Tayoun Antitumor antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are a class of therapeutic molecules used in cancer therapy. Their main purpose is to channel the drug to a specific tumor site, kill cancer cells while sparing healthy cells and minimizing collateral damage [1]. ADC comprises of three key components: (1) an antibody, (2)... 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: 12 minutes Felicites Rapon Recently, chemically engineered molecules have been produced to incite the degradation of a given protein. These molecules are called PROTACs [1], which stands for PROteolysis-TArgeting Chimeras. How does the degradation of a protein work? The degradation of a protein, also called proteolysis, is achieved by the mechanism of ubiquitination.... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 6 minutes Ryan Rispman Since its discovery, radiation has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, radiation is a killer. It can break apart DNA, leading to mutations that can cause cancer and other diseases. Many of the early scientists who studied radioactive materials eventually ended up dying of radiation-induced illnesses1,... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Ian Lock By directing immune cells to attack tumor cells, immunotherapy uses the body’s own biological mechanisms to target and eliminate cancer. Recently this concept has been retooled for another class of therapeutics that capitalizes on a cell’s internal processes to target cancer cells. Adapted from Promega PROTACs or proteolysis-targeted chimeric... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Muhammad Ayhan Murtaza The word phototherapy comes from two words, “photo” and “therapy” which, evidently so, means “medical treatment using light”. The word has its roots in the older Greek language, but much like this old language, cancer is by no means a newer predicament. In fact, it actually predates human... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Aya Elmeligy Angiogenesis is the formation of blood vessels within the body to provide oxygen and nutrients to tissues. Tumors will hijack this process to allow for continued growth and metastasis by forming their own vascular system. Microvessel density within a tumor is often used as a prognosis tool, as the... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Deepika Jayaprakash What is common to eukaryotic organisms like animals, plants, fungi, and unicellular organisms? Ubiquitous Ubiquitin! Ubiquitin (ub) is a small protein found in all eukaryotes that when attached to its target protein can bring about a myriad of cellular processes. The first observed effect of ubiquitination was degradation of... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Susan Egbert Statistics show that about 80 percent of the world’s population consume herbal/dietary supplements without specific recommendations to take them1, with some cancer patients using herbal/dietary supplements to alleviate their symptoms (e.g. pain, nausea, etc),2,3,4,5. Generally, patients consider herbal/dietary supplements “safe” since they are “natural,” however, herb-drug interactions (HDI) (e.g.... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 3 minutes Bhavuk Garg Cancer treatment options have undergone multiple strategic shifts over the course of the last century starting with resection and moving to chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and chemical inhibitors. Major challenges faced by many therapeutics are adverse toxic reactions inflicted on the patients and the development of therapeutic resistance due to high... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Melanie Padalino “Do you have any spices?” my friend Elizabeth asked while cooking an omelet in my kitchen. “Yep, there should be a whole bunch in the cabinet” I replied. Without hesitation, she went straight for the little glass jar of ground turmeric, an ancient spice known for its bright orange... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Ifeoluwa Oyelade Imagine a scenario where an individual is diagnosed with a type of cancer, and physicians only need to prescribe a treatment that is specific and optimized to that individual and the type of cancer, with little or no undesirable side effects. That is the goal of precision medicine in... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes “It cannot get any better with our three-in-one device…buy one get one free today,” sings my radio as I commute to the lab daily. I nod in agreement to such commercials because I love to do more with less. Currently, many products are often rebranded as multi-purposed because products and services... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Bhavuk Garg Cancers are characterized by uncontrolled growth and failure of differentiation, whereby cells lose their physiological characteristics and acquire malignant phenotypes, also known as neoplastic properties. Examining the distinct properties of cancer cells and their underlying mechanisms are active areas of investigation. Broadly, these properties are summarized as hallmarks of... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Deanna MacNeil One goal in cancer therapy is to strike a balance between treatment efficacy and toxicity. While treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are meant to kill cancer cells, healthy tissues can be adversely affected in the process. Common side effects of systemic cancer treatment occur because treatments work... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 4 minutes Susan Egbert Did you know that researchers are trying to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) with cancer treatments? There are plenty of studies in oncology available that range from diagnostic to treatment that are peer-reviewed (experts looking at the articles before publishing). This is useful for AI as the more data that... Continue Reading →
Reading time: 5 minutes Mahrukh Fatima Did you know that some animals, like salamanders and axolotls, can regenerate their limbs? They have this spectacular ability due to a small and rare subset of primitive cells called stem cells. These cells have the ability to differentiate into many different types of specialized cells from brain cells... Continue Reading →
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