Advancing Medical Research

Foundations of Science

The ‘Ecology’ of Cancer: Studying the ‘Soil’ that Enables the Disease to Thrive

Borrowing from the field of ecology, cancer is now being examined in terms of the relationship between a cancer cell and the traits of its local environment — the tissue, cells and blood vessels — that help it to thrive. The severity of a cancer diagnosis is most often viewed through the lens of its stage (I – IV), which defines whether a tumor is isolated to its original location or has metastasized, potentially…

How to Deal Dangerous Proteins a Knockout Blow

In the genteel game of croquet, the goal is deceptively straightforward: to hit your ball through a series of hoops before your opponent does. However, anyone who has picked up a mallet knows the sport can get downright cutthroat. A strong player with the right strategy can hit her opponent’s ball so far away that it essentially knocks him out of the game.

That’s similar to what scientists are starting to…

Banking on the British Exome

The vast UK Biobank is a treasure trove of genetic data. Scientists are mining it now for potential therapeutic gems.

May the Best Cell Win: How Scientists Choose One Champion Out of Millions

Making cells in the lab may not sound too dramatic, but under the microscope, what scientists call cell-line development can be even more competitive than the most cutthroat reality-show contests.

Patients as Partners in Developing New Medicines

With a growing emphasis on patient-reported outcomes, study volunteers are becoming active participants in evaluating a treatment’s efficacy. Since the first reported controlled clinical trial in 1747, when Scottish surgeon James Lind studied how eating oranges and lemons can cure scurvy among sailors at sea, patients have always been essential to expanding medical knowledge and developing new therapies. After all…

Could Diversity in Clinical Trials Be the Key to Understanding Liver Disease?

In a New Yorker article about how evolutionary psychology findings are usually based on surveys of undergraduates, Anthony Gottlieb wrote, “American college kids, whatever their charms, are a laughable proxy for Homo sapiens.”

Biomedical research can suffer from a similar bias: Subjects don’t always represent the full range of patients in terms of gender, race and ethnicity. But why is it…

Treating Disease with 'Precision Medicines' that Target Specific Patients

When people talk about curing cancer, an oncologist’s reaction likely is: What kind of cancer? If you answer “breast cancer,” the oncologist will likely want to know which of its many varieties do you mean? Precision medicine — the customization of treatments targeted to specific patient populations for specific ailments — has been made possible in recent years by advances in technology and the resulting…

‘Bucket Brigades’ Gone Rogue: A New Path to Shutting Down Cancer Growth

A critical pathway in our cells acts like a bucket brigade, efficiently passing on signals that control cellular growth. But what happens when one set of “hands” on the line goes rogue? The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway is a chain of proteins that relays signals from outside the cell into the nucleus, controlling cellular growth and death. When this essential pathway malfunctions, it may lead to more…

Getting a Medicine to the Brain Is a Major Challenge in Drug Design: How This Scientist Solved It

For cancer patients who have been treated with a particular medicine for some time, one of the hurdles many of them face is the tumor developing a resistance to the medicine. It’s a cruel twist that can affect patients being treated for non-small cell lung cancer, which can mutate and begin attacking the brain. Lung cancer accounts for most cancer-related deaths in the U.S., with non-small cell lung cancer being the…