Members of ISB’s Heath Lab and their collaborators have developed a way to sensitively detect and analyze neoantigen-specific T-cell populations from tumors and blood. This promising development may have implications for creating targeted, individual-specific cancer vaccines.
ISB’s Dr. Sui Huang uses the theory of complex systems and applies it to cancer research. In this video Q&A, he discusses the cancer paradox and highlights the importance of understanding the mechanism of what cancer treatments can backfire in order to open a new avenue for therapy and treatments.
Dead cells, or cell debris, generated by treatments intended to eradicate tumor cells actually act as strong stimulators of tumor progression. The findings of ISB cancer biologist Sui Huang, his former mentee and longtime collaborator Dipak Panigrahy at Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School were published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.
By Sui Huang and Joseph Zhou, ISB Editorial Board Members Cancer cells, for decades regarded as a uniform mass of identical (“clonal”) cells, are not like the soldiers of a traditional army, trained to act and respond in unison. Cancer cells, even within a genetic clone, express enormous individuality akin to guerrilla fighters, each with unique strengths, weaknesses and distinct behaviors. Therefore, they do not respond to an attack from…
