All Pods / Cancer
Treating Cancer: Learn about cancer immunotherapy and explore where the field is headed
Treating Cancer: Learn about cancer immunotherapy and explore where the field is headed
Group size
3-6 students
Outcome
An article that can be submitted to a pre-print archive
Tuition
$495
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Treating Cancer: Learn about cancer immunotherapy and explore where the field is headed
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death globally, and detection and treatment remains a huge area of research focus in the 21st Century. In this pod, students interested in medicine, biology, and genetics will gain a broad understanding of basic cancer biology, basic immunology principles, and classic types of cancer immunotherapy. Each student will then explore and write about immunotherapy use in a specific type of cancer of their choosing, incorporating at least one primary research paper into their review. In addition to learning about Immunotherapy, students will learn the fundamentals of reading and writing research papers.
Week by week curriculum
Week 1
What is cancer? We will discuss the basic definition of cancer. We will broadly review the Hallmarks of Cancer. We will cover the waves of treatment options. Lastly, we will cover myths and truths about cancer.
Week 2
What is the immune system? Part 1. We will discuss the immune system, first by discussing the different challenges our bodies must be able to defend against. We will then go into a brief overview of major immune cell types, focusing on those most commonly dysregulated in cancer. We will cover a brief introduction to signal transduction.
Week 3
What is the immune system? Part 2. We will discuss the immune system in depth by examining how our immune system typically responds. We will focus on T cell activation. We will then discuss how cancer is able to exploit and turn off this immune response. Students will learn, in particular, about MHC, immune checkpoints, and tumor specific antigens.
Week 4
What is immunotherapy? We will broadly discuss classes of immunotherapies, including antibodies, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and adoptive cell therapies. We will focus on the design of these and how they should overcome the immune evasion discussed in week 3.
Week 5
How does a drug idea get to market? We will discuss the overall stages of drug development, and will focus on the different stages of clinical trials. Students will learn how to navigate the clinical trials database and gain an understanding of clinical trial terminology.
Week 6
When can we use immunotherapy, and when can’t we? We will focus on understanding when immunotherapy is typically prescribed. We will discuss current limitations, as well as discuss how some patient groups benefit, while other patient groups do not benefit from immunotherapy. We will discuss the role of biomarkers in predicting efficacy.