With 145 stories highlighting the work of University of Colorado Cancer Center members, our newsroom had something for everyone in 2024. Our content covered cancer research, student highlights, expanding leadership, community programs, and much more.
Take a look back at our top stories from 2024.
Actor Adan Canto — known for his roles in "Designated Survivor" and "X-Men: Days of Future Past" — died in January at age 42, after a battle with appendix cancer. His death is raising awareness of the relatively rare disease.
CU Cancer Center member Steven Ahrendt, MD, talked about how appendiceal cancer is diagnosed and treated.
As word of the effectiveness of chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR T-cell therapy, for blood cancer continues to spread, excitement is growing about the new treatment and the possibilities it offers for patients with blood cancers and other types of cancer.
One of the leaders in the development of CAR T-cell therapy is CU Cancer Center member Terry Fry, MD. He shares the latest data on CAR T therapy and what’s next for the innovative treatment.
It’s been six years since Emily Daniels, a non-smoker who was 33 weeks pregnant with her second child, felt tightness in her chest and received a lung cancer diagnosis. After her baby was delivered, five weeks early, further tests showed that Daniels had stage IV ALK-positive non-small-cell lung cancer.
She found her way to the CU Cancer Center. There she encountered Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, who for decades has helped lead groundbreaking research into lung cancer treatment.
CU Cancer Center member Kasey Couts, PhD, answers questions about acral lentiginous melanoma, the cancer spotlighted in the new Bob Marley biopic "One Love."
Marley’s cancer formed under the nail of one of his big toes. Doctors originally thought the lesion was a sports injury, but it was later found to be cancerous. The cancer eventually spread throughout the singer’s body, causing his death at age 36.
Sapna Patel, MD, a widely renowned melanoma oncologist and clinical investigator, has joined the CU Cancer Center, with a goal of helping to build a “pinnacle of skin cancer treatment” in the Rocky Mountains.
“I’m so thrilled to be here,” Patel says. "It's a place that has a clear vision to conquer cancer, where hope meets healing, and every day we have the chance to advance the care and treatment of patients with cancer.”
All women need to pay attention to their risk factors for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, but women of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jewish ancestry should be especially vigilant, says CU Cancer Center leader Marie Wood, MD, as their risk for having a genetic variant in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes is increased, predisposing them to developing hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
A healthy woman of Ashkenazi Jewish descent has a 1 in 40 chance of having one of these BRCA gene mutations, says Wood, co-director of the hereditary cancer program at the CU Cancer Center and medical director of the center’s Cancer Clinical Trials Office.
After a well-documented breast cancer journey that started in 2015, actress Shannen Doherty — best known for her role as Brenda Walsh on the Fox teen drama “Beverly Hills, 90210” — died from the cancer in July, at age 53.
Doherty’s journey highlighted the importance of health insurance even for the Hollywood actress, who didn’t have insurance when first diagnosed. A lack of insurance can hinder cancer detection and treatment, and it’s a problem that is quite familiar to CU Cancer Center Deputy Director Cathy Bradley, PhD, a public health researcher who studies decisions made at the intersection of work, health insurance, and cancer.
Bradley talks about the connection between health insurance status and getting screened or treated for cancer.
CU Cancer Center member Lynn Heasley, PhD, received a Merit Review Award renewal from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to study the role of the immune system in patients with lung adenocarcinoma who are treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).
Heasley and his collaborators have shown over the past couple of years that the patient's host immunity has something to say about how that response goes.
Research led by CU Cancer Center members Todd Pitts, PhD, and Jennifer Diamond, MD, looks at ways to overcome resistance to doxorubicin, a type of chemotherapy drug that slows or stops the growth of cancer cells, in treating triple-negative breast cancer.
Pitts and Diamond, along with research assistant Stephen Smoots, investigated whether using doxorubicin along with a drug developed by CU Boulder researchers, called bocodepsin, would help reverse senescence and lead to apoptosis, a process of cell death that can be blocked in cancer cells.
Enrique Soto Pérez de Celis, MD, PhD, joined the CU Cancer Center from Mexico to become the center's associate director for global oncology.
“Part of the idea behind my new role is to continue building bridges with the local communities, and also to create a connection between local communities and the countries where they originally came from one, two, or three generations ago,” says Soto.