Featured Articles
Read our latest stories on the people and scientific innovations making a difference in patients’ lives.
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...
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
*/ /*-->*/ /*-->*/ 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...
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...
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...
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...
The ‘Ecology’ of Cancer: Studying the ‘Soil’ that Enables the Disease to Thrive
Borrowing from the field of ecology, cancer is now being examined in terms of the relationship between a cancer cell and the traits of its local environment — the tissue, cells and blood vessels — that help it to thrive. The severity of a cancer diagnosis is most often viewed through the lens of its stage (I – IV), which defines whether a tumor is isolated to its original location or has metastasized, potentially becoming more dangerous by spreading to other parts of the body. Recent...
Treating Disease with 'Precision Medicines' that Target Specific Patients
When people talk about curing cancer, an oncologist’s reaction likely is: What kind of cancer? If you answer “breast cancer,” the oncologist will likely want to know which of its many varieties do you mean? Precision medicine — the customization of treatments targeted to specific patient populations for specific ailments — has been made possible in recent years by advances in technology and the resulting breakthroughs in understanding how a given disease may differ among patients. Resear...
Getting a Medicine to the Brain Is a Major Challenge in Drug Design: How This Scientist Solved It
For cancer patients who have been treated with a particular medicine for some time, one of the hurdles many of them face is the tumor developing a resistance to the medicine. It’s a cruel twist that can affect patients being treated for non-small cell lung cancer, which can mutate and begin attacking the brain. Lung cancer accounts for most cancer-related deaths in the U.S., with non-small cell lung cancer being the most common type,, so the scope of the problem is broad. But if lung...
‘Bucket Brigades’ Gone Rogue: A New Path to Shutting Down Cancer Growth
A critical pathway in our cells acts like a bucket brigade, efficiently passing on signals that control cellular growth. But what happens when one set of “hands” on the line goes rogue? The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway is a chain of proteins that relays signals from outside the cell into the nucleus, controlling cellular growth and death. When this essential pathway malfunctions, it may lead to more than just chaos—it may determine how cancer progresses. If one of these...
How a Former Neuroscience Researcher Is on a Mission to Close the Diversity Gap in Clinical Trials (Q&A)
When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently gave a presentation on diversity in clinical trials, Dr. Ricardo Rojo wasn’t surprised to hear that — at least for medicines where gender is not overtly relevant — research participants today are predominantly white men. Rojo, Pfizer’s first Global Lead for Diversity in Clinical Trials, is on a mission to change this. For years, the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry and various stakeholders have been working to improve racial, ethnic...
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