Kathy Boltz, PhD

Losing weight through diet or diet and exercise improves risk for cancer in overweight or obese postmenopausal women. Although exercise alone can help maintain weight loss, it is not as effective as diet and exercise.

With only 1 slide of a tumor section, an analysis of multiple tumor markers can be performed. The technique may help predict response to immunotherapy, which typically evokes responses in only a small group of patients.

Rapid, robust, and affordable genetic testing for patients with ovarian cancer that allows a much larger portion of patients to benefit from personalized cancer management and their relatives to benefit from preventive strategies can be achieved.

Repeat doses of ipilimumab can restore a complete remission in patients with advanced blood cancers who relapse after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (alloHSCT).

Increasing body mass index (BMI) allows growth and progression of disease in patients with multiple myeloma, a recently published study has shown.

Variants of the MC1R gene, associated with red hair, pale skin, and freckles, increases the number of genetic mutations related to skin cancer and the level of other gene mutations, further increasing the risk for skin cancer.

Therapies targeting ErbB2 (HER2), such as trastuzumab (Herceptin), are often associated with cardiovascular side effects. ErbB2 was recently found to also be expressed by vascular endothelial cells, and is an example of how tissue growth and blood vessel patterning are integrated at the molecular level.

A very large retrospective study of patients with stage II colon cancer found adjuvant therapy improves survival, regardless of treatment regimen, patient age, or high-risk pathologic risk features.

A subset of tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) has hybrid characteristics of both neutrophils and antigen-presenting cells in samples from early stage human lung cancers.

Oncologic patients are among the main users of ICUs and are vulnerable to infections and adverse drug reactions. However, relatively simple processes of organization can reduce the risk of these problems.