Pancreatic cancer
A Pritzker Grad Joins the Nobel Club
The University of Chicago can fill a couple of classrooms with all of the Nobel Laureates affiliated with the school, from Milton Friedman to Saul Bellow to Barack Obama. After Monday, a third room might have to be opened up, as Pritzker School of Medicine graduate Bruce Beutler became the 86th member of the exclusive […]
How to Recycle Cancer GWAS Data
In the 2000s, a new kind of genetic experiment was born: the genome-wide association study, or GWAS. If geneticists could recruit enough people with a particular disease and compare them to an equal number of disease-free controls, they believed GWAS would point the way to common gene variants associated with disease risk and novel biological […]
Podcast Episode 0.2: Stretching, Whipple at 90, NIH Cuts
Welcome to pilot episode 2 of our Medical Center research news podcast. We’re keeping the water wings on for now as we continue to refine the format and discover all the technical struggles inherent in podcasting, but please do listen and give us feedback on how we’re doing – and if you have good ideas […]
Clinical Trials at a Turning Point
Phase II clinical trials are the clutch moments of translational science, the place where the star medical advances are separated from the disappointing pretenders. Backed by years of promising laboratory findings and a Phase I trial to assess toxicity, a Phase II trial is the first chance for researchers to see whether a new drug […]
Why Patrick Swayze’s Cancer Was So Hard to Treat
As you’ve no doubt heard by now, actor Patrick Swayze died yesterday at age 57 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. In March, blog founder Jeremy Manier interviewed University of Chicago Medical Center physician Dr. Irving Waxman about pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest and hardest to treat cancers. The challenge, as Waxman explains, is […]
Finding Hope With Pancreatic Cancer
By Jeremy Manier Pancreatic cancer has made an unusual amount of news lately, with the very public struggles of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, and actor Patrick Swayze. The diagnosis can be dire news; the mean survival time following diagnosis is often measured in months, though that can vary […]
Detecting pancreatic cancer
By Jeremy Manier There’s a fine pancreatic cancer piece in the Chicago Tribune today by Robert Mitchum, a friend of the blog who recently got his Ph.D. in neurobiology at the University of Chicago. Rob uses a new study on a potential method of detecting pancreatic cancer to talk about the urgent need for such […]
