CU Cancer Center News and Stories

When Dara Aisner, MD, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, was approached by a colleague at another university about splitting the cost of a bulk purchase of new clinical testing products, she initially declined. Although it would be a valuable resource — and might even save her lab money in the long-term — the short-term cost was prohibitive.

Valerie Gleaton | September 07, 2021

After suffering from painful bouts of pancreatitis for more than a decade, Christina Gonzalez felt resigned to a seemingly endless cycle of procedures.

Valerie Gleaton | August 31, 2021

Though people most often think of melanoma as affecting the skin, the cancer can occur anywhere in the body where pigment-producing melanocyte cells are found. That includes mucous membranes in the head, neck, eyes, respiratory tract, and genitourinary region.

Greg Glasgow | June 23, 2021

A 13-year veteran of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is coming to the University of Colorado Cancer Center to help lead efforts to develop and apply data science and artificial intelligence and methods to advance research and improve clinical practice.

Greg Glasgow | December 30, 2020

One of the major complications of severe COVID-19 is blood clots in the lungs – a pulmonary embolism that can block lung function leading to death. In fact, these blockages are similar to those from chronic heart disease, stroke, and even traumatic injuries like a car crash or gunshot wound. In these non-COVID-19 conditions, doctors use drugs to break up and dissolve the clotted blood. Now a team led by Colorado trauma surgeon Gene Moore, MD, is testing a similar approach against the dangerous blood clots associated with COVID-19.

Cancer Center | May 19, 2020

Cells have a big decision: Should they replicate or sleep? Healthy cells can go either way. Cancer cells’ replication switches are stuck in the ‘on’ position. Now a study by University of Colorado Cancer Center researchers working at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute and published today in the journal Science overturns the conventional wisdom of how these switches work – a model accepted since 1974 and included in current textbooks. 

Cancer Center | April 02, 2020

Biomedical research can generate big data and it takes big brains running big computers to make any sense of it. For University of Colorado Cancer Center investigators, the solution has been to enlist the bioinformatics expertise provided through the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource (BBSR). Led by Director James Costello, PhD, and Manager/Data Analyst Andrew Goodspeed, PhD, the team of five experts at the BBSR shakes and sifts numbers until meaning emerges. But despite BBSR expertise in data analysis, the researchers generating the data in the first place are often in the best position to define “meaning,” and sending data away for analysis can leave these experts one step removed from their own work. Also, there is only so much shaking and sifting the BBSR can do, leading to a bottleneck in the workflow of research: Data is being generated across the Anschutz Medical Campus faster than investigators can make sense of it.

Cancer Center | December 05, 2019