George Rebane
Our granddaughter Elizabeth received her PhD last Friday after seven years of research at the Department of Oncology of UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine. She is one of the school’s research stars having developed a ground-breaking method for treating glioblastoma patients. Glioblastoma is the most virulent and deadly form of brain cancer that took the life of Elizabeth’s cousin and our granddaughter Ellen at the age of fourteen after her clinically historic fight for survival. Elizabeth dedicated her work to Ellen.
Elizabeth presented a summary of her research and defense of her dissertation to the gathered in one of the medical school’s amphitheaters, attended by her doctoral committee, research colleagues, medical students, and, of course, her family. The hour-long presentation was followed by a Q&A session and then a reception at the school, with a big dinner later in the evening. Her accolades delivered by the director of her research lab and the head of the school’s oncology department were impressive. She now has a choice on whether to stay in academe, preferred by UCLA, or go into the commercial sector as an oncology researcher.
For those interested, I’ll describe a bit of her research. The forbidding title of her dissertation and published work is ‘Integrating molecular and functional profiling to identify therapeutic vulnerabilities in glioblastoma’. The easiest way to understand what Elizabeth has developed is a methodology for screening glioblastoma patients as to their receptivity to what promises to be a new standard of care procedure involving a unique cocktail of bio-chemicals (think of chemo) that will either destroy the glioblastoma cells or shrink the tumor into remission. (The current standard of care for glioblastoma is virtually a death sentence within eighteen months from diagnosis.)
Elizabeth’s treatment destroys glioblastoma cells either by utilizing the body’s apoptosis process or invading the cell itself and destroying a couple of its components critical for its continuing survival. Apoptosis is a type of programmed cell death that naturally goes on in our bodies, killing old or diseased cells, to make room for new cells and thereby maintain the body’s state of homeostasis (think balance). Elizabeth’s research developed a method of intervention that initiates apoptosis against glioblastoma cells with a high likelihood of inducing the immune system to kill them.
The added and critical attribute of the method is that it is computable. This means that the cost of its application to patients will be reduced as such therapeutic software becomes part of the dreaded disease’s standard of care. Those of you with an entrepreneurial bent can foresee the manifest benefits of all this.
Congratulations to Elizabeth for the years of hard work and pulling it off!
Thanks for the update on your granddaughter. We wish her all the best for her career and for success in her research for a cure.
Posted by: Scott O | 26 January 2025 at 07:19 PM
Congrats to the granddaughter. Somebody has to do all that science stuff as I most certainly can't hold it in my head.
No doubt she's well adapted to segue into new approaches if a legion of Nvidia cards is the way to go on that sort of research.
A person does have to appreciate how complicated tiny things can be. It's like magic.
Posted by: scenes | 27 January 2025 at 06:11 AM
Wow, congratulations to your granddaughter . Her accomplishments are very impressive and give me hope for our collective future.
Posted by: MikeL | 27 January 2025 at 06:12 AM
Congratulations to your granddaughter on her PhD. Always good to add to the wealth of human knowledge.
So it looks like her research works side-by-side with the existing 540-My evolutionary journey we've taken from the seas, into now helping more than a few humans survive.
Posted by: The Estonian Fox | 27 January 2025 at 06:32 AM
Congrats to grandchild, parents and grandparents for a big milestone.
My first wife and mother to our son died 25 years ago of a cancer that was first noticed a century earlier in an ancestor in Switzerland who died... it is sad an off switch is still being sought.
After Teri was diagnosed, I started paying attention to oncology news; I remember one survey of MD's stating that if they were diagnosed, they'd get their affairs in order and live the best life they could in the time they had left... I think that advice is still good but I've not been faced with the choice. Hope I never do.
Posted by: Gregory | 27 January 2025 at 01:58 PM
Just wondering, George... specifically, what is her PhD in... Oncology, or another term?
Posted by: Gregory | 28 January 2025 at 01:10 PM