Leukemia understanding and treatment: Where do we stand?

When I first started learning about cancer in my school days, the textbook definition for cancer was “uncontrolled cell growth,” which left me wondering: why is it harmful to the body if cell growth is high? Later I learnt that cancer cells residing in the tissue are like the weeds that grow in our garden. Like weed, the cancer cells compete with healthy cells for nutrients and hinder the growth of normal functioning cells, resulting in inhibition or decreased function of the whole organ. For this reason, most of the current cancer treatments focus on decreasing the tumor burden and paving the way to restore organ function. These cancer treatment drugs work mostly by inhibiting the DNA duplication process, thereby activating cell death. But these drugs don’t particularly differentiate between normal cells and cancer cells. Even normal cells in our body undergo frequent cell division; one of the best examples is hair growth. This is the reason why most cancer patients undergoing cancer treatment suffer hair loss as a prominent side effect.

Dr. Bolisetti's fellowship is under the supervision of Dr. Jing Zhang at UW-Madison's McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research.