I wanted to share a school project that I worked on in my junior year of high school. It was for an advanced biology course (my favorite class of all time, btw). The goal was to write a 5000 — 7500 word research paper (well, more like a review paper) on a topic of our choice. I chose to write on the chemotherapy resistance of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancers of all time.
The story behind my choice is quite personal. But the basic gist is that two of my family members currently have pancreatic cancer, and it's devastating to know they might only have a few months or years left with me. I wanted to learn more about why this disease is so hard to treat and why the 5-year survival rate is only 7%.
As you guys know, cancer is extremely hard to cure. They have lots of ways to hide from our immune system and resist therapy. It's super complicated and I spent almost half a year compiling, writing, and editing what I learned into a paper, and I want to share this so that you guys can have an easier time understanding.
Even though this was for a class, I really enjoyed writing it and I hope you guys find it as exciting as I did. You can find my paper here or read it on this page.
Brief outline of topics:
The story behind my choice is quite personal. But the basic gist is that two of my family members currently have pancreatic cancer, and it's devastating to know they might only have a few months or years left with me. I wanted to learn more about why this disease is so hard to treat and why the 5-year survival rate is only 7%.
As you guys know, cancer is extremely hard to cure. They have lots of ways to hide from our immune system and resist therapy. It's super complicated and I spent almost half a year compiling, writing, and editing what I learned into a paper, and I want to share this so that you guys can have an easier time understanding.
Even though this was for a class, I really enjoyed writing it and I hope you guys find it as exciting as I did. You can find my paper here or read it on this page.
Brief outline of topics:
- The dense pancreatic tumor microenvironment
- Fibroblasts and their role in chemoresistance (secretion of Snail mRNAs and MicroRNAs)
- Endoplasmic reticulum stress (how it's developed and its effect on therapy resistance)
- Specific proteins in the microenvironment that increase chemoresistance
- Features of pancreatic cancer stem cells that can help target their removal