reflections

As part of our scholars’ program, we are invited to join the Dell Medical School in their series of lectures about the pathology of different cancers, the current methods of screening and treatment, and various research areas from clinicians and researchers. This week we heard from Dr. Anna Capasso on Colorectal Cancer and from Dr. Yvette Brown on Cervical Cancer. While I would love to go into the details of each lecture, I will simply state something that stood out to me.

Working as a medical oncologist and a cancer researcher, Dr. Capasso researches in the unique hybrid that is translational research, which combines both clinical and basic research to help bridge the gaps between the discoveries in basic research and the actual treatments in the clinical setting. With colorectal cancer, one such promising treatment method is immunotherapy, which trains the body’s immune system to attack cancer. One way to verify the effectiveness of these therapies is through Patient-derived xenografts or PDX models. PDX models take cells from a patient’s tumor and implant them into a humanized mouse in which immunotherapies can be tested (Figure 1). The advantage of PDX models is that it allows for co-clinical trials in which a patient’s response can be first be predicted in mouse models. I think this is really cool as simulating how the human body would respond to a treatment is often hard to recreate.

Looking back at all the cancer lectures we have had so far, I appreciate hearing directly from clinicians who are doing their screenings and treatments according to guidance from the latest research. It puts the work of our projects in perspective as something small we do could indirectly improve screening or treatment options for patients. That is exciting to think about.

Abram Huang | University of Maryland at College Park

This week we began watching the documentary called Jim Allison: Breakthrough. This movie documents the life and achievements of the University of Texas’s own Dr. Jim Allison. This renowned researcher has dedicated his life to the study of the immune system and cancer. In 2018, Dr. Allison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of a novel, “cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation,” according to the Nobel Prize Organization. Specifically, he has pioneered a method to engineer T-cells (one cellular component of the human immune system) to recognize cancer cell antigens that it would not normally recognize and then kill these cells. This is a revolutionary therapy for cancer because it provides a level of specificity never before achieved. Current treatments, like chemotherapy drugs or radiation treatment, broadly attack all dividing cells. Although it targets cancer cells because they divide so quickly, both treatments have significant off-target effects that produce the hallmark cancer symptoms like hair loss, fatigue, and nausea.

So far, we have only watched about 30 minutes of the documentary recapping the beginning of his life and research career, but throughout the next few weeks of the program, we will slowly watch more and more. It was interesting to see exactly how his cancer afflicted family, dealings with a grade school teacher pushing to weed out the theory of evolution in favor of creation theory, and an early bacterial discovery leading to his continued research into the role of the immune system in oncology shaped his career and path through life.

Jim Allison’s discovery is very applicable to us biomedical engineers because it provides hope to patients and creates a new field of study. This week, my partner Sahil and I are beginning to model the response of gliomas, a brain cancer with ~ 2-year life expectancy after diagnosis, to radiation therapy. As I mentioned earlier, radiation therapy creates other problems in the pursuit of killing the cancer cells within. It is inspiring to know that Jim Allison’s immunotherapy may provide a way to both stretch this life expectancy and serve as a potential cure for these patients that have not seen a medical breakthrough in many years. However, it is the duty of us emerging biomedical engineers to apply this therapy to various cancers and develop cost-cutting methods of cellular and antibody engineering to increase the breadth and accessibility of this promising therapy.  I am excited to finish watching this documentary, both for the content and because the program sent us popcorn to eat while we watch 🙂 

Zach Cacini | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign