Cold Springs Harbor Cancer Research Center

Being given the opportunity to attend the lecture on breast cancer research and treatment update at the Cold Spring Harbor Cancer Research Center through the Levermore Global Scholars Seminar in The Sciences was great. The guest speakers, Dr. Lora Weiselberg, Dr. Mikala Egeblad, and Dr. Nicholas Tonks, provided the audience with substantial information about the history and current research on breast cancer, as well as the research on developing a cure.

Dr. Weiselberg presented information on the history of breast cancer, dating back to the 1600s, as well as her focus on breast cancer treatment and cancer chemoprevention.

Dr. Egeblad, who studies the contributions of the tumor microenvironment—in which cancer cells arise and live—to cancer therapy responses and metastasis, presented a lot of interesting information in her presentation. Using cutting-edge imaging technology, Dr. Egeblad and her team showed how white blood cells help tumor cells survive chemotherapy, and they have found that tumors responded much better to chemotherapy when the white blood cells were prevented from entering breast tumors.

Dr. Tonks, in his presentation, displayed his focus in understanding the mechanisms by which cells sense and respond to stimuli from their environment that regulates growth, differentiation, movement and survival, and defining how these responses are disrupted in such diseases as cancer, diabetes and obesity.

It was wonderful attending this lecture because through their presentations, I was able to witness how Dr. Weiselberg, Dr. Egeblad, and Dr. Tonks were in the process of making an impact in the world. Overall, I’m glad I was able to attend this trip because, like my classmates, I realized how important it is to be aware of the developments being made in a research field that affects millions of people worldwide.