Reading time: 5 minutes Aishwarya Subramanian The life cycle of cells is a key piece of our understanding of cancer; as cells grow, they divide and produce two new “daughter” cells. For the cells to divide, grow and survive, it requires energy which they gain by metabolising glucose. However, every healthy cell that divides has... Continue Reading →
Excess Adenosine: How Cancer Cells Use The Deaths of Their Neighbors to Protect Themselves
Reading time: 4 minutes Sara Musetti As fancy as the many cancer therapies on the market may seem, the underlying goal for all cancer medicines is the same: kill cancer cells. Chemotherapies damage the DNA of rapidly dividing cells enough that the cells die, immunotherapies train the immune system to kill cancer cells, radiation causes... Continue Reading →
Fasting Away Tumors (With a Little Help From Metformin)
Reading time: 4 minutes Sara Musetti The world of drug discovery is a frustrating, delicate world. Scientists spend years working on fine-tuning molecules to improve their function, make them safer, or even just make them easier to give to patients. We have a catalog of drugs that work on single, specific proteins only found in... Continue Reading →
Diet-based measures can reduce the risk of cancer- fact or fake news?
Ananya Sen It has been widely proven that there is a correlation between weight and cancer. Being overweight increases the cancer risk 52-62% compared to people with a healthy weight because excess body fat causes an increase in hormones that promote tumor growth. This result begs the question- is there a link between diet and... 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 →