Category Archives: In the News

Fat Advantage, Wheels, and a Citation Laureate at MSK this Week in the News

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Pediatric oncologist, Dr. Joannes Zakrzewski, MD, was awarded a $250,000 grant from Hyundai Hope on Wheels to improve care and treatment for kids with cancer. HHOW is presenting 24 recipients throughout the country with a total of $7.5M in 2016 in award grants. This organization has been funding childhood cancer research since 1988 and so far, has awarded $115M for pediatric cancer research. On Tuesday, September 27, the Scholar Grant was presented with a Handprint Ceremony featuring local young cancer patients’ handprints on a canvas.

Dr. Craig Thompson, MD was honored earlier this month by Thomson Reuters as one of their 2016 Citation Laureates in Physiology or Medicine for his work on explaining how CD28 CTLA-4 regulate T cell activation and therefore modulate immune response. Since 2002, Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates have been awarded in the following Nobel categories: Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. “All the researchers have demonstrated themselves, by their contributions and citation records, to be ‘of Nobel class’ and worthy of future Nobel recognition. And many of their Citation Laureates do accomplish that, in the past 14 years 39 of Thomson Reuters selected laureates went on to win that ultimate prize, 9 in the same year that they were named Citation Laureates and 16 within two years. Continue reading →

New in Immunotherapy, Nanoparticles and More…

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Surfing the web, I uncovered these new items worth sharing:

  • Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a computer program to distinguish between radiation necrosis and recurrent brain cancer. In a comparison, the program outperformed a pair of neruoradiologists in diagnostic accuracy. Read more on this development in the American Journal of Neuroradiology.
  • A new study outlines the development of a synthetic polymer capable of transporting a drug into lung cancer cells without affecting normal lung cells. The discovery that nanoparticles can be selective may have huge implications for patient outcomes.  The research has been published in PNAS.
  • A new immunotherapy treatment has shown dramatic promise in treating patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Patients enrolled in a trial receiving the new treatment, IMM-101 with chemotherapy, showed significant survival advantage compared to patients treated with only chemotherapy. Further details provided in the British Journal of Cancer.
  • A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that “active monitoring” of prostate cancer patients does not increase death rates as compared to patients that had undergone surgery or radiation.