Damon Runyon has awarded Quantitative Biology Fellowships to three outstanding young scientists applying computational approaches to persistent biological questions. Their projects will use machine learning, spatialomics, advanced network modeling, and other technologies to better understand breast cancer risk, improve response to immunotherapies, and identify new chromosomal drivers of cancer. Each postdoctoral scientist will receive independent funding ($240,000 total) to train under the joint mentorship of an established computational scientist and a cancer biologist.

Women with abnormal mammograms often have to wait for weeks to find out whether they have breast cancer.

 

Now, researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have found a way to help reduce the wait and the worry by using AI to quickly identify those who are most likely to have the disease. By triaging these patients, the AI-guided workflow takes women with abnormal scans through the diagnostic process — from imaging to evaluation and sometimes even biopsy — in a single day. 

A UC Irvine-led study analyzed 3,511 cancer patients across six UC medical centers to examine infection-related side effects to antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs.

Researchers found some ADC therapies were linked to dangerously low infection-fighting white blood cell counts and related complications, including hospitalization.

Led by pharmacy professor Alexandre Chan, the study highlights the need for closer monitoring and supportive care as targeted cancer therapies become more widely used.

The newly integrated University of Texas at San Antonio and its academic health center, UT Health San Antonio, recently received over $2.7 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to help develop the next generation of cancer researchers and focus on Ewing sarcoma, AI in oncology and the obesity-endometrial cancer risk.

Dr. Jason Chiang and Dr. Kyung Sung of the department of radiological sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have received a $3.2 million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced imaging platform designed to improve yttrium-90 (Y90) radioembolization planning for patients with liver cancer.

Dr. Mina Sedrak, director of the UCLA Center for Cancer and Aging and director of Cancer Control and Survivorship Research at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been selected to serve as co-chair of the Cancer in the Older Adult Committee for The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology.

About The Study: In this cohort study of patients with early breast cancer, prediagnostic statin use was not associated with higher survival; however, postdiagnostic statin use was associated with lower all-cause and breast cancer–specific mortality among patients with hormone receptor–positive intrinsic subtypes. These findings suggest that statin therapy may improve survival of patients with early hormone receptor–positive subtypes.