All Pods / Cancer
Cells Gone Rogue: Understanding the Biology of Cancer and potential treatments
Cells Gone Rogue: Understanding the Biology of Cancer and potential treatments
Group size
3-6 students
Outcome
A 1-3 page article or report that can be submitted to a pre-print research archive
Tuition
$495
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Cells Gone Rogue: Understanding the Biology of Cancer and potential treatments
Cancer, one of the leading causes of death globally, can arise due to an organism’s inability to replicate its genomic DNA perfectly. But what occurs inside a cell to allow these errors in replication to occur? In this pod, students interested in medicine, biology, and genetics will gain a basic understanding of cancer biology; such as how intrinsic and extrinsic factors that cause damage DNA can lead to the development of cancer, different ways of treating cancer, and how cancer can become resistant to treatment and spread around the body. Each student will explore and write a short paper about a particular treatment method used to treat a cancer of their choosing, incorporating at least two primary research papers into their review. In addition to learning about basic cancer biology, students will learn the fundamentals of reading and writing research papers and communicating science to others.
Week by week curriculum
Week 1
What is cancer? We will discuss the basics behind what cancer is and will broadly review the hallmarks of cancer. Lastly, we will cover myths and truths about cancer.
Week 2
What is the cell cycle? In this session we will cover the stages of the cell cycle, cell cycle checkpoints and discuss how issues with checkpoints can lead to uncontrolled cell division.
Week 3
Every cell has their DNA replicated perfectly, right? In this session we will cover central dogma of biology and the steps to replicate DNA, how mutations arise, and mutations are handled by cellular machinery.
Week 4
How can cancer become resistant to treatment and metastasize? In this session we will DNA damage repair and tolerance pathways and how uncontrolled replication can lead to metastasis and the cancer spreading to other organs.
Week 5
What are common treatment methods for cancer? In this session we will discuss treatment methods for cancers, their limitations, and how precision medicine can reshape the future of treating cancer.
Week 6
How is artificial intelligence (AI) changing the drug treatment landscape? In this session we will discuss the overall stages of drug development and how they go through clinical trials before being FDA approved. We will tie in drugs that target DNA replication and cell cycle checkpoints and discuss how AI is changing the drug-design landscape.