These cancer patients write their own story
They hurt. They weep. They fly. They soar above the thunderheads. They plunge back to earth. They hold fast to their lovers and their children. They bruise. They burn. They heal. Cancer is not a...
Tag: immunotherapy
A surgeon-scientist blazes a new path to immune-based cancer treatment
It’s a paradox: The immune system’s cancer-fighting T cells target and infiltrate tumors, but often they stop working and let the cancer grow. Trained as a surgeon, Robert Eil, M.D., had...
The cancer kept coming back
His life was blasted apart by a rare but vicious type of cancer. Could an experimental treatment help? When Derek Fadness woke up, the room was dark and his face was swaddled in bandages. He could...
Sex hormones limit cancer immunotherapy success
Scientists have discovered how the sex hormone androgen, most commonly testosterone in men, can limit the body’s response to cancer immunotherapy, a finding that may help make those therapies more...
How to make more cancers vulnerable to immunotherapies
Cancer immunotherapies called checkpoint inhibitors can bring dramatic, life-saving results – but only for a limited fraction of patients. Aiming to help more patients benefit, researchers in...
The Pacific Northwest has a top performer for CAR T therapies and stem cell transplants
OHSU's immunotherapy and cell transplant team has earned national recognition for its expertise and experience providing CAR T-cell therapy — the breakthrough treatment for children with leukemia...
Advancing immunotherapy for life-threatening prostate cancer
Restoring tumor-specific immunity is a treatment strategy that has worked well, but only against some cancers. Research led by OHSU oncologist Julie Graff, M.D., revived hope that the approach may...
Sustained results with a CAR T-cell therapy for an aggressive blood cancer
When chemotherapy stops working and stem-cell transplantation fails or is not an option, medicine has little to offer patients with the aggressive blood cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma,...
A potential way to reduce the risk of postpartum breast cancers
Breast cancers that emerge in young women within a few years after pregnancy are strikingly more dangerous. A new study suggests that the common pain reliever ibuprofen might work as a preventive...
Study explains a tumor enabling role of the immune system – and suggests a new treatment approach
OHSU researchers led by Lisa M. Coussens, Ph.D., have revealed a novel mechanism underlying how cancer cells co-opt complement proteins of the immune system to promote tumor growth. And the...
These prostate cancer researchers are using gut bacteria to fight tumors
Cancer researchers at OHSU have been awarded $1 million to test the idea that adjusting the diversity of bacteria inhabiting the intestines could make aggressive prostate cancers more responsive to...