Yutonia Tang

What is the current state of immunotherapy treatments targeting breast cancer, and what is their efficacy compared to chemotherapy?

Started July 6, 2023

Abstract or project description

Breast cancer is one of the most commonly occurring cancers in women, and is the second leading cause of death. This cancer mostly affects middle aged and older women. Various types of treatment include local treatment or systemic treatment. Under the system treatment there is chemotherapy which is still the standard of care for most breast cancers, and developing treatments such as hormone therapies, targeted therapies, and immunotherapies. Immunotherapies are a type of therapy that makes use of the patient's own immune system to target the disease. This paper highlights checkpoint inhibitors (death-1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) inhibitors, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) inhibitor) and individualized approaches (peptide vaccine, cancer-testis antigen (CTA), new antigen vaccine, RNA vaccine, chimeric antigen receptor modified T cells (CAR-T)).

Assessing the state of bias in AI utilization for breast cancer care

Started Aug. 22, 2022

Abstract or project description

Yutonia will be surveying the literature to determine the state of bias in the utilization of artificial intelligence for breast cancer care. She is interested in both understanding why the bias exists and what can be done about it. To do this, she will compile and summarize literature in the field that has covered AI bias in healthcare. Specifically, she will focus on how AI algorithms are developed, what the impacts of their implementation has been, how this will evolve in the future, and what can be done to overcome bias to improve outcomes for all. She will propose promising strategies for circumventing bias to meaningfully contribute to the field with her work.