Acs Research - Theorylab

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is rare and accounts for only 1% to 5% of all breast cancers, but it is considered an aggressive cancer because it grows quickly and is more likely to come back after treatment than other types of breast cancer. It causes symptoms of breast inflammation like swelling and redness, which is caused by cancer cells blocking lymph vessels in the skin causing the breast to look "inflamed." Gayathri R. Devi, PhD, is a two-time American Cancer Society grantee who recently received a Mission Boost Grant to “boost” her inflammatory breast cancer research and move it closer to patients. Dr. Devi joined the podcast to talk about risk factors for IBC, how it’s different from other breast cancer types, and recent advances in her lab with promising clinical implications. Dr. Devi is Program Director for the Duke Consortium for Inflammatory Breast Cancer, Associate Professor of Surgery and Pathology at Duke School of Medicine, and the Director of the Duke North Carolina Central Universi

The first few minutes of this conversation is for a lay audience, as Elham Azizi, PhD, and Charly Good, PhD, explained how they’re investigating what causes cancer to grow and spread and how to improve immunotherapy. Then the discussion moved toward a scientific audience, as Drs. Azizi and Good shared recent findings and asked probing questions about future directions and opportunities in cancer research. Elham Azizi, PhD, is a former American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow who is now an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. She joined the podcast to share findings from her recent publication, “Mapping the evolution of T cell states during response and resistance to adoptive cellular therapy” (https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01471-6#secsectitle0020). Charly Good, PhD, is an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Shelley Berger, PhD, at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently published research in Cell on “An NK-like CAR T

Corinne Leach, PhD, MPH, MS, who leads cancer survivorship research at the American Cancer Society, joined the podcast to discuss her recent publication on the rise of mental health distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study-3 (CPS-3) cohort, Dr. Leach and collaborators “identified factors associated with increased depression and anxiety during the pandemic, including sociodemographic characteristics, stressors, and comorbid conditions associated with increased risk for poor COVID-19 outcomes.”* They also presented findings related to financial stressors and looked at long-term implications. For resources and information to help you cope during and after cancer treatment, please visit: https://www.cancer.org/treatment/survivorship-during-and-after-treatment.html Dr. Leach is Senior Principal Scientist of Behavioral Research in the Population Sciences group at the American Cancer Society. She serves as the Principal Investigator of the America

People going through cancer treatment sometimes have cognitive changes such as trouble remembering, paying attention, or thinking clearly. Drs. Judith Carroll and Kathleen Van Dyk are clinician scientists who help patients with cancer-related cognitive impairment and conduct research into what causes it, how to identify patients at risk for it, and how to reverse its effects. Judith Carroll, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and she’s the term Endowed Chair of the George F. Solomon Professorship in Psychobiology at UCLA. She’s also a Member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. She received American Cancer Society funding to support her research on “Biobehavioral Vulnerability to Accelerated Aging In Breast Cancer Survivors” from 2016-2020. Kathleen Van Dyk, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science at the Jane and Ter

In this episode of the TheoryLab podcast, two American Cancer Society grantees discussed key takeaways from their recent publications. In the first part of the conversation, which is intended for a lay audience, Dr. Joshua Andersen and Dr. Bhuminder Singh talked about targeted therapies, treatment side effects, and drug resistance. Then they moved into a more technical discussion of their recent papers. Dr. Andersen recently published findings showing that “TNK1 is a ubiquitin-binding and 14-3-3-regulated kinase that can be targeted to block tumor growth.” https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25622-3 Dr. Singh published a study recently showing that “Induction of apically mistrafficked epiregulin disrupts epithelial polarity via aberrant EGFR signaling.” https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.255927 Joshua L. Andersen, PhD, is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Brigham Young University. He is a two-time American Cancer Society grantee. Bhuminder Singh, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Cell and Dev

When a cancer patient has a serious diagnosis, clinicians and families can struggle with how patients experience hope. Three distinguished palliative care physicians and researchers joined the podcast for a conversation about their recent paper in JAMA titled, “Holding Hope for Patients with Serious Illness” (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2784454). Drs. Abby Rosenberg, Robert Arnold, and Yael Schenker shared their own experiences treating seriously ill patients and talked about how we can navigate the tension between appreciating the potential therapeutic benefit of hope and being concerned about perceived unrealistic hopes: “Rather than being concerned that hope is either so fragile that it can be lost, or so powerful that it can overwhelm decision making, clinicians should remember that hope is protective, if not necessary, for managing serious illness. Holding complex, flexible, and diverse hopes enables patients to believe in the unlikely while simultaneously accepting the ine

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women in the United States and worldwide. Small cell lung cancer comprises 15-17% of lung cancer cases, and it is the most aggressive subtype of lung cancer, growing rapidly and spreading to other organs quickly. Luke Hoeppner, PhD, received American Cancer Society funding to test whether therapeutically targeting a specific molecular pathway inhibits small cell lung cancer growth. Dr. Hoeppner’s lab was the first to report that activation of this particular pathway, called dopamine signaling, inhibits other forms of lung cancer growth. By therapeutically altering the dopamine signaling pathway, he hopes to inhibit small cell lung cancer progression and drug resistance, facilitating further advancement to new treatments. For more information about lung cancer, visit https://www.cancer.org/cancer/lung-cancer.html. Luke Hoeppner, PhD, is Assistant Professor and leader of the Cancer Biology research section at The Hormel Institute, Univer

According to American Cancer Society researchers, in the United States in 2021, there will be an estimated 281,550 new cases of invasive breast cancer diagnosed in women.* Finding breast cancer early and getting state-of-the-art cancer treatment are the most important strategies to prevent deaths from breast cancer. Breast cancer that’s found early, when it’s small and has not spread, is easier to treat successfully. Getting regular screening tests is the most reliable way to find breast cancer early. The American Cancer Society has screening guidelines for women at average risk of breast cancer, and for those at high risk for breast cancer: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/screening-tests-and-early-detection/american-cancer-society-recommendations-for-the-early-detection-of-breast-cancer.html. Two breast cancer researchers joined the podcast to discuss screening for the early detection of breast cancer. Anne Marie McCarthy, PhD is a cancer epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Universit

“More than 50% of cancer survivors report problems paying medical bills, financial distress, or delaying and/or forgoing medical care in the past year.”* The financial burden of cancer can affect survivors for years. And it can affect anyone: a cancer diagnosis as a young adult can have financial ramifications that can change the course of a person’s life; a diagnosis for someone who’s retired and on a fixed income can pose problems that nobody should have to face. The cost of cancer treatment also deepens disparities—not everyone can afford the most effective treatments. Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, and Robin Yabroff, PhD, are two of the leading voices on research on the financial burden of cancer. They joined the podcast to discuss prescription drug coverage in America, problems that cause financial challenges for people with and without insurance, and potential policy solutions. Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and an Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Resear

The St. Baldrick's Foundation, the largest charitable funder of childhood cancer research grants, and the American Cancer Society, a health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer, formed a partnership in 2019 to fund grants that will accelerate childhood cancer research with the goals of understanding and discovering new treatment options and improving care and survival in children with cancer. Kathleen Ruddy, St. Baldrick’s Foundation CEO, joined the podcast to talk through the goals of this unique partnership. “Why do some patients respond better than others to a particular treatment? Why does one treatment cause more late effects than another? What else can we learn to speed up progress, to cure more children, more effectively, and less harshly?” Then two of the grantees who have been funded through the partnership talked about what they hope to accomplish. Yael P. Mossé, MD, is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Neuroblastoma Developmental Th

A new publication by six current and former American Cancer Society grantees describes the challenges faced by early-career investigators as a result of the pandemic and offers recommendations “to help institutions and individuals develop effective strategies to promote success and career advancement.” They joined the TheoryLab podcast to talk about key takeaways from their article, which “highlights the aftermath of the pandemic on work–life balance, promotion, tenure, funding, networking, and mentoring, and make recommendations that can help remediate these problems.” “Overstretched and overlooked: solving challenges faced by early-career investigators after the pandemic” was published in the journal Trends in Cancer: (https://www.cell.com/trends/cancer/fulltext/S2405-8033(21)00158-8) 3:41 – Brock Humphries, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan. Priscilla Hwang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. Aga Kendrick, PhD, is a

Two American Cancer Society grantees—one with a recent publication on the early mechanisms of lung cancer initiation, the other with a new study out on the development of melanoma resistance during the earliest phases of treatment—joined the podcast for a conversation about catching the problem early. This conversation is geared for a scientific audience, until the last few minutes. Sabrina Spencer, PhD, is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at University of Colorado, Boulder. She recently published a study in Nature Communications on “Melanoma subpopulations that rapidly escape MAPK pathway inhibition incur DNA damage and rely on stress signaling:” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21549-x?elqTrackId=2842c2f36cc243139afc4151f4f48ee6. Xaralabos (Bob) Varelas, PhD, is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine. He recently published work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America titled, “Aberrant epithelial polarity cues dri

When tumors grow within the body they press on surrounding tissues, building up pressure. Pancreatic cancer builds up more pressure than any other cancer. Why is that? How do cancer cells adapt to this high-pressure environment or take advantage of it? In the words of Liam Holt, PhD, “Normal cells and early-stage cancer cells stop growing when pressure builds up. In contrast, in advanced cancer, compression can change cellular behavior to drive migration of cancer cells to other organs or confer resistance to chemotherapy… By determining the fundamental biology of pressure adaptation, we may discover strategies to treat this currently untreatable disease.” Liam Holt, PhD, is Associate Professor at the NYU School of Medicine. 1:50 – Why do pressure and compression matter for normal cells? “From the earliest embryo through to astronauts, we can find really good examples of how cells are responding to their mechanical environment to make sure they do just the right thing.” 6:09 – What happens when a tumo

In this episode, Gustavo Martinez, PhD, and Daniel Herranz, PhD, discussed their new cancer research publications. Dr. Martinez talked about his research into how T cells respond in the context of cancer, and Dr. Herrera explained his lab’s findings related to targeting cancer metabolism in leukemia. Gustavo Martinez, PhD, is Assistant Professor at Rosalind Franklin University. He received American Cancer Society funding to support his research into T cell exhaustion and boosting our immune system’s response against cancer. Daniel Herranz, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His ACS-funded research focuses on T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The first half of the conversation is more technical and is directed towards a scientific audience. The second part, starting at 17:27, is for all audiences. 1:38 – Dr. Martinez on the focus of his lab and takeaways from his recent publication in The Journal of Immunology titled, “Kdm6b Regulates the Generat

In this episode, Ran Li, PhD, and Daniel Heller, PhD, discuss new advances in using nanoparticles to deliver drugs to cancer cells. Dr. Li was recently the first author of a paper in Nature Nanotech that described how cancer cells could be tricked into thinking they’re starved for nutrients, causing them to increase consumption of a cancer drug attached to the protein, albumin. Dr. Heller published a review earlier this year that “highlights recent progress in precision therapeutics and drug delivery, and identifies opportunities for strategies to improve the therapeutic index of cancer drugs and, consequently, clinical outcomes.” Ran Li, PhD, is an American Cancer Society – Ellison Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and Instructor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Daniel Heller, PhD, is Associate Member at Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is a two-time American Cancer Society grantee, having received a Postdoctoral Fellowship and Research Sc

In this episode, two American Cancer Society grantees discuss recent findings related to how breast cancer patients feel about de-escalating chemotherapy as well as a new paper on comorbidities in breast cancer patients. The first half of the conversation is not necessarily technical, but it’s geared for a scientific audience. The second half is a more general discussion for a lay audience. Avonne Connor, PhD, is a breast cancer epidemiologist focused on health disparities research. She is Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Oncology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and has a joint appointment at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. She recently published findings in the journal Cancer on “Comorbidities and the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality among racially diverse patients with breast cancer:” https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.33530 Gabrielle Rocque, MD, is a breast medical oncologist and health services researcher with an interest in quality and va

Finding out that a loved one has cancer can bring many changes. Doctors and nurses receive years of training in patient care, but family caregivers are often thrust into this role overnight with no training on the critical processes that their loved ones depend on them to do properly every day. Rachel Cannady—as Strategic Director of Cancer Caregiver Support at the American Cancer Society—creates resources that empower caregivers with the resources and information they need. Visit https://cancer.org/caregivers to learn more about what to expect if you become a caregiver for a person with cancer, and get tips for making sure that you take care of yourself as well. Among the resources there are the Interactive Caregiver Resource Guide and the Caregiver Support Video Series. The Interactive Caregiver Resource Guide is a comprehensive tool to help you learn how to care for yourself as a caregiver, better understand what your loved one is going through, and develop skills for coping and caring. It can be acces

Elyse Park, PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Health Promotion and Resiliency Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Associate Director of Survivorship Research, and Psychosocial Services for the MGH Cancer Center Survivorship Program. Her most recent American Cancer Society grant focuses on developing a health insurance navigation program for childhood survivors. Travis Baggett, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of research at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, and an MGH research scholar. His ACS grant supports research into lung cancer screening navigation for homeless people. Sanja Percac-Lima, MD, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a primary care physician at the MGH Chelsea Community Health Care Center, and physician leader for cancer outreach at MGH Cancer Center. A former ACS grantee, her research focuses on cancer prevention in ethnic and racial minorities.

In this episode—which is for a scientific audience until the 27-minute mark—a current American Cancer Society grantee and a former grantee spoke with each other about their recently published new findings in cancer research. Alessandro Gardini, PhD, an Assistant Professor at The Wistar Institute, studies the epigenetic control of transcription during cell differentiation and oncogenesis. He recently published work in Cell titled “The PP2A-Integrator-CDK9 axis fine-tunes transcription and can be targeted therapeutically in cancer:” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34004147/. Yuan He, PhD, is Assistant Professor (but just received word that he’s being promoted to Associate Professor!!) at Northwestern University. The He lab The He lab uses cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and other biophysical and biochemical approaches to understand “the molecular mechanisms by which large, multi-subunit complexes engage in DNA-centric processes.” Dr. He recently published findings in Science on, “Structure of the human M

Lisa McKenzie, PhD, has a new American Cancer Society research grant to explore the relationships between oil and gas environmental exposures and childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The award builds upon her preliminary studies, which suggested that children living near oil and gas wells “may be economically disadvantaged and at greater risk for childhood leukemia.” According to Dr. McKenzie—who is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Public Health—approximately 3 million children in the United States live within one mile of an oil and gas well. In this episode, Dr. McKenzie explains how she plans to evaluate the association between exposures from oil and gas development and childhood leukemia risk and why this work is critically needed to support state and federal policy. 4:51 – Lisa McKenzie, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Public Health 6:11 – On fracking and how oil and gas are removed from the ground 8:38