1. Understanding Cancer Accelerated Biology

2. Faces of Cancer  You are a doctor interviewing a person (the piece of paper you got on the way in) with cancer.  You will identify and add to the board:  If there is a family history  Period of life diagnoses with cancer  Type of Cancer  Risk Factors From this, we will try to construct an understanding of how cancer affects people.

3. What conclusions can you draw from the data?  What affect might family history have on the likeliness of getting cancer?  What affect might age have on the likelihood of getting cancer?  In general?  Certain type?  What affect might risk factors might have on the likeliness of getting cancer?  Cancer is a multifactorial disease. What do you think that means?

4. Reviewing our diagnosis notes?  Routine screening vs. imaging vs. genetic testing vs. biopsy  Which of the above is can actually diagnose cancer?

5. Cause  Hereditary vs. Carcinogen vs. Chance  Genes change the way cells behave!  Oncogenes  Accelerated Cell Cycle  Cyclin  Growth Signal  Tumor Suppressor Genes  p53  Apoptosis: programmed cell death

6. Spread and the name of cancer  Metastasis  Need for oxygen:  Hypoxia stimulates angiogenesis  Why might a tumor cell need oxygen?  If a tumor didn’t get oxygen what would happen?

7. Spread and immortality  Telomerase:  Chromosomes shorten every replication.  This makes cells “mortal”  During times when cells need to divide many times, an enzyme called telomerase repairs telomeres.  Telomerase can be reactivated in cancer.

8. Treatment  3 types of treatments:  One patient may have one or even all three treatments:  Surgery  Chemotherapy  Radiation

9. Isn’t radiation a mutagen?  High levels of radiation: destroys cells  Low levels of radiation: mutates DNA

10. Does chemotherapy make you sick?  Depends:  Some chemotherapies non-specifically kill fast dividing cells.  Where else in your body do you have fast dividing cells?  What precautions do people on chemo take?  Other chemotherapies are targeted:  Targeted at angiogenesis  Targeted directly at specific cancer cells  Targeted at boosting the immune system.

11. How are stem cells used to treat leukemia?  Bone marrow transplant  Donor bone marrow  Autologous bone marrow transplant

12. Doctor and patient jigsaw  Make up your own case study:  Identify what tests have been done to diagnose the patient.  Provide results.  Explain what may have gone wrong with the cells and identify if your patient has signs of metastasis.  Switch partners with another group; you will be the patient and someone from the other group will be the doctor. You will share your story and the doctor will suggest a treatment based on the symptoms you have described.