Turkish engineer and activist Bülent Şık was convicted and sentenced to 15 months in jail for publishing confidential results of a government study. His team discovered poisonous chemicals in food and water samples, linked to the high cancer incidence in western Turkey. Continue reading Turkish Environmental Researcher Imprisoned for Publicizing Cancer Study
by Rosie Rosati On September, 11th 2001, hundreds of thousands of firefighters, responders, and volunteers rushed to Lower Manhattan to aid those lost in the destruction of the World Trade Center. U.S. citizens will never forget the devastation that swept the nation that day, however, those who so graciously lent a helping hand are still suffering the consequences of toxic airborne emissions. Upon the attacks, … Continue reading America’s Turn to Protect 9/11 Responders this Mesothelioma Awareness Day
Cancer immunotherapy exploits our immune system to kill cancerous cells. Recently, researchers have discovered a novel way to do this. They engineered cells that are programmed to die and injected them into tumor. They have successfully shown that the dying cells is able to kill tumor cells via recruitment of the immune system. This strategy might be a potential new method to improve the efficacy of current cancer immunotherapy methods. Continue reading The New Trojan Horse: Using tumor cells to kill tumors
by Apurva Govande figures by Rebecca Clements The single greatest challenge of fighting cancer is that cancerous cells come from our body’s own cells. Because cancer cells are similar to healthy cells, successfully and specifically targeting cancerous cells with minimal damage to healthy cells and tissue is difficult. A major advance against cancer in the past decade, cancer immunotherapy is a therapeutic treatment that helps our own … Continue reading Checks and Balances: “Unblocking” the fight against cancer
by Michael Vinyard figures by Nicholas Lue Most therapeutic drug candidates that are put through clinical trials fail. Given that most of these fail during early development, the cost of bringing a single drug to market is now over $2.5 billion. If we focus on cancer alone, this high cost of drug development, combined with the fact that cancer is one of the leading killers in … Continue reading CRISPR-Scanning Towards New Drugs — drug discovery is difficult, but CRISPR might be able to help
by Garrett Dunlap figures by Aparna Nathan Perhaps no animal is better suited to its name than the Tasmanian devil. While it might look cute and cuddly, in reality this animal is quite the opposite. With the strongest bite of any mammal and an infamous blood-curdling scream, the Tasmanian devil is a fierce and formidable creature known to attack animals many times its size. But … Continue reading Facing Facts: Why a transmissible facial cancer is decimating Tasmanian devil populations
by Francesca Tomasi figures by Olivia Foster Rhoades Argonaut. Idéfix. Flamenco. These words invoke movement: the ancient Greek Argonauts were a band of adventurous sailors famous for their epic quests. Meanwhile, Idéfix is the name of an adventure-loving dog in the French Astérix comic book series. And finally, flamenco conjures images of vivacious dancers. You would think the similarities between Greek mythology, French comic books, and … Continue reading Transposons: Your DNA that’s on the go
Chemotherapy is a common cancer treatment, using drugs to destroy cancer cells. However, cancer cells can develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs by developing “efflux pumps”, pumps in the cell membrane that work to actively expel the chemotherapy drugs from the tumor cells. Shana Kelley and her team in University of Toronto developed nanomaterials that can deliver drugs into cancer cells and suppress their drug resistance. … Continue reading Nanomaterials as cancer treatment: overcoming drug resistance in chemotherapy
Let’s consider a paradox of probabilities. If all cells have the same risk of becoming cancerous, then the likelihood of developing cancer is proportional to the number of cells in an animal. This argument generally holds true for the incidence of cancer and body size for individuals within a given species. However, when comparing across different animal species, there is no constant proportionality between body … Continue reading Zombie genes help eradicate elephant cancer in early stages
by Alyson Warr figures by Olivia Foster One in eight women in the United States will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. This statistic makes breast cancer the leading cancer diagnosis for women in the US. With such staggering numbers, a focus on prevention is key: how can we stop breast cancer before it starts? One way is to develop fast and convenient methods of … Continue reading Using Genetics to Fight Cancer: The pros and cons of direct-to-consumer testing