Article

Solving the Matchmaking Problem in Precision Medicine Cancer Studies

 With the rise of precision medicine, scientists are hopeful that more cancer patients can receive treatments tailored to their specific tumor mutations. But with these advances, a matchmaking problem has also emerged: It can be very challenging to recruit enough patients with specific tumor mutations to participate in clinical trials.However, a pioneering clinical trial model is helping more patients with advanced-stage non-small-cell lung cancer participate in studies that match their tumor...

Science & Innovation

Behind the Breakthroughs: The Scientists Behind Pfizer’s Cancer Research

Have you ever wondered what makes a cancer researcher tick, or how the pursuit of life-changing treatments became their life’s work? How about what keeps them up at night, and what goes through their mind when an experiment fails? And what about the things that inspire and motivate them every day in the lab? Click on the videos below to find out, and to get to know the talented scientists at Pfizer who are working to deliver the next wave of cancer breakthroughs.   Meet Our Scientists

Living & Wellbeing

Using ‘Omics to Understand the Rise in Breast Cancers Among Young Asians

By Get Science Staff - This article originally published on Get Science Asian women, compared to their counterparts in western countries, are diagnosed with breast cancer at earlier ages and face a worse prognosis. In an effort to better understand this patient population, scientists from Pfizer and Samsung Medical Center (SMC) in Seoul, Korea, have embarked on a multi-phase project to do multi-omic profiling of the tumors of some 187 younger Korean breast cancer patients. Multi-omics refers...

Science & Innovation

Attacking Cancer Cells That Develop Resistance

By Get Science Staff - This article originally published on Get Science When cancer patients receive therapy for an extended time, they often face the specter of drug resistance as tumor cells mutate and find ways to evade the cancer-killing medicines. Exploring new ways to disarm rogue cells that have developed resistance is a major field of modern cancer research. One way to address the issue of resistance is to attack cancer through the fundamental processes that drive their core mission —...

Cachexia Insights: Helping Improve Quality of Life in Chronically Ill Patients

It’s an experience familiar to almost anyone with a family member or friend who has fought a terminal illness, such as cancer or heart failure. In the final stages of life, it can seem as though their loved one is wasting away. This dramatic loss of muscle and fat is caused by cachexia, a wasting disorder that afflicts patients in the late stage of nearly every chronic illness. It’s the immediate cause of death in nearly 20 to 40 percent of cancer patients. “So many people can relate to someone...

The Winding Road to Discovery: How Unexpected Data Led to Novel Insights into Cancer Treatment

The path to discovery rarely follows a straight line.In 2015, as a post-doc researcher at Pfizer, Michael Arensman got an early lesson in this maxim. At the time, he set out to study the protein xCT, a transporter that carries nutrients into cells, and its role in T-cell proliferation. As a young scientist, he was eager to have his results published and contribute to the field of immunology.But about a year into the study, his hypothesis failed. He took his unexpected results, however, and...

Next-Gen Scientific Changemakers: Following 'Good Science' to Attack Cancer on All Fronts

After earning her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis in 2010, Megan Kaneda was looking for a lab to do post-doc research. Her graduate studies focused primarily on nanoparticle drug delivery. But after reading a paper on the recruitment of immune cells into tumors by Judith Varner, a professor of pathology at the University of California San Diego, Kaneda switched paths in order to work with her in the emerging field of immunotherapy. “Honestly, I saw her...

Using "Molecular Glues" to Hijack the Body’s Garbage Disposal System

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'} Proteins are the stuff of life. They comprise the hormones, enzymes and many other molecules that are essential to our body’s functioning. But sometimes these loyal workhorses can go rogue, leading to cancer, autoimmune diseases and a variety of neurological conditions.  Scientists who develop drugs are always looking for new ways to target these disease-related proteins — either to shut down their activities or to turn...

Breathing New Life Into Lung Cancer Research

The story of cancer was long seen as a single narrative: a cell acquires genetic mutations, starts to divide uncontrollably and then spreads.But in recent years, this tale has become more complex. Scientists are increasingly aware that a tumor’s microenvironment — its surrounding healthy cells, including fibroblasts that form connective tissues, as well as blood vessels and immune cells — are more than just innocent bystanders, they actively contribute to the developing tumor and can play a role...

A Drug Safety Scientist Inspired by the Migrant Farmers of California

Sometimes it only takes one inspiring educator to set you on your career path. As an undergrad at UC Davis in the late 1970s, Jon Cook had a charismatic professor who sparked his interest in the field of toxicology, which studies the safety effects of drugs and chemicals on living organisms. “This guy was huge; he was 6 feet, 6 inches tall and 300 pounds and played football in college. He was so jovial and had so much enthusiasm,” says Cook, Chief Toxicology Scientist at Pfizer’s Groton...

Tumor-Typing: A New Way of Assessing Cancer Treatment Options

A method of analyzing tumors could inform response to immunotherapies.  You can probably guess how your closest friend will react to a particular situation: It’s an intuition that arises out of the database of knowledge about her built up over years and stored in your mind. Predicting how someone might react to a treatment, though, is a process that has vexed researchers working in the burgeoning field of precision medicine. How can they “know” a patient’s immune system, a patient’s cancer, and...

Brenda Carrillo-Conde: Unlocking the Power of Connections

Brenda Carrillo-Conde has a talent for conjugation: making connections for the greater good — inside the lab and out. As a principal scientist with Pfizer’s Conjugation and Polytide Process Development Group in St. Louis, Missouri, she spends her workdays using chemical conjugation to improve the effectiveness of vaccines and medicines.  In the lab, conjugation is a process that connects molecules together by a system of strong bonds and has a wide-range of real-world applications.  “It has a...