Despite being told all the time that the our research is eventually going to help with the clinics, I actually used to not buy it. Especially before I joined my current lab in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and before I really worked on clinically related research projects, I always thought that there was a huge gap between lab and hospital. However recently I started to realize that the gap is actually shrinking so much faster than I could have ever imagined. The MSKCC lab building and Memorial Hospital Building is side by side, and thus sharing of results from lab bench with clinics could never be faster.
I want to share two real life stories here that I actually recently experienced.
A friend of mine introduced me to a oncology surgeon from China this week. He will spend a year here in a MSKCC lab learning research. He shared with me an interesting question the lab was that he was going to work on which was truly based on clinical findings. One of the newest cancer therapy to treat solid tumors is by doing cryablation surgery. Basically cryoablation means to kill cancer cells with extreme cold. It complements conventional surgery and can help relieve the pain of many different types of cancer as an extra bonus. Interestingly, many clinicians and labs have found that, the dying tumor cells can release signals that activate the immune system of patients. Participation of more immune cells can help eliminating the original tumor and even secondary metastatic tumors. Exactly how the immune system get activated and which immune cells are involved in the process is still unknown. But it certainly provide some clues for the anti-tumor effect of cryotherapy on some patients could benefit from combining with immunotherapy.
My lab received some tumor samples from clinics this Tuesday. They were from a young kid who just received a surgery to remove the tumor in his stomach. We immediately dissociated part of the sample for culture (which we could later on test for potential drugs) and also froze down some down for later protein extraction. (Apparently I'm going to do a bunch of experiments on the samples.) The next day, my boss called me in, asking me to test the expression level of a tumor-specific marker. It was suggested that this specific marker is highly expressed in this type of tumors. Since immunotherapy targeting this marker has been developed, the kid could potentially go under such immunotherapy if his tumor does have the marker. This is one time that I see the bond between clinics and labs to be this tight!
The idea came to me one day that I want to share what I learn from the newest research papers, the academic talks I go to, and what I see/hear/feel about life in lab by writing in this blog. Hopefully what we value could also be appreciated by people outside the field.
I want to share two real life stories here that I actually recently experienced.
A friend of mine introduced me to a oncology surgeon from China this week. He will spend a year here in a MSKCC lab learning research. He shared with me an interesting question the lab was that he was going to work on which was truly based on clinical findings. One of the newest cancer therapy to treat solid tumors is by doing cryablation surgery. Basically cryoablation means to kill cancer cells with extreme cold. It complements conventional surgery and can help relieve the pain of many different types of cancer as an extra bonus. Interestingly, many clinicians and labs have found that, the dying tumor cells can release signals that activate the immune system of patients. Participation of more immune cells can help eliminating the original tumor and even secondary metastatic tumors. Exactly how the immune system get activated and which immune cells are involved in the process is still unknown. But it certainly provide some clues for the anti-tumor effect of cryotherapy on some patients could benefit from combining with immunotherapy.
My lab received some tumor samples from clinics this Tuesday. They were from a young kid who just received a surgery to remove the tumor in his stomach. We immediately dissociated part of the sample for culture (which we could later on test for potential drugs) and also froze down some down for later protein extraction. (Apparently I'm going to do a bunch of experiments on the samples.) The next day, my boss called me in, asking me to test the expression level of a tumor-specific marker. It was suggested that this specific marker is highly expressed in this type of tumors. Since immunotherapy targeting this marker has been developed, the kid could potentially go under such immunotherapy if his tumor does have the marker. This is one time that I see the bond between clinics and labs to be this tight!
The idea came to me one day that I want to share what I learn from the newest research papers, the academic talks I go to, and what I see/hear/feel about life in lab by writing in this blog. Hopefully what we value could also be appreciated by people outside the field.
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