Cancer may never have a cure, but one senior has made sure its treatment can be more efficient.
After extensive research, Ralph Passarella has succeeded in developing a more effective form of chemotherapy. This will potentially lessen the one in eight human deaths attributed to cancer.
To be more precise, Passarella has discovered a faster way to check whether cancer treatment has been successful and a way to decrease the side effects of chemotherapy in a cancer patient. Unlike the normal two-month process, Passarella’s system takes only two days to detect if chemotherapy has been effective. With a quicker method, doctors will be able to appropriately adjust the treatment a patient receives, which could in turn save their life.
Furthermore, the new treatment method allows chemotherapy to be targeted at only one area of the body, meaning doctors can avoid the painful and debilitating organ damage that presently accompanies chemotherapy.
Due to the great number of benefits that would accompany this modification in cancer treatment, Passarella is anxious for the medical community to view his work. Part of the study has already been published in Clinical Cancer Research, a medical journal, and the entire study has been submitted to Nature Medicine, another biomedical publication. As more doctors learn of his findings, they can begin to be used to improve the success and quality of cancer treatment.
Although Passarella had two mentors, Dr. Dennis Hallahan and Dr. Roberto Diaz, he worked independently and never received step-by-step directions.
“My mentors never told me to do 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. They told me to get to 4,” Passarella said.
Though he was not told how to solve the various problems he encountered, he does attribute the opportunities he received to his mentors.
“When you start out, you’re usually scrubbing glasses,” he said. However, his mentors allowed him to give his input on problems and take a greater role in the ongoing research. Consequently he became involved in active research earlier than some of his fellow undergraduate students.
Though Passarella is optimistic about the impact the project will have on cancer treatment, he is also cautious in his enthusiasm. He believes that people need to understand that cancer will never be as easily treated as other human ailments.
“Many people think that there is going to be some magical cure for cancer that we will discover like we did for polio, but there isn’t,” he said.
But despite the difficulties of oncology, Passarella thinks that improving the effectiveness of cancer’s treatment and diagnosis is more important than searching for a cure.
“Hopefully research like my group’s work is a step forward in that effort,” he said.
