Arizona Cancer Evolution Center (ACE)

Our visit to Kyrene del Cielo Elementary School in Chandler, Arizona was huge fun! We were talking about blood and cancer across the animal kingdom in The DISCOVERoom, where children who want to learn more about science spend their lunchtimes. The kids were in grades K – 5 and we were amazed and delighted by their enthusiasm.

The first two of our undergraduate interns started working with our project this fall and we are delighted to welcome Sydney Collier and Kenna Sherman! Kenna and Sydney are based at UCSB, working primarily with Amy Boddy and mentored by Valerie Harris.

This is how Kenna describes her project:

“The project I am working on, under the supervision of Dr. Boddy, involves analyzing cancer rates in animals. Initially, I will be working with the Santa Barbara Zoo to gather information on the cancer rates in their animals. This involves going through their medical records and recording all instances of cancer, as well as the total number of each animal in a specific time frame. This information will be combined with a preexisting larger database. I will then choose a specific factor like mass, lifespan, or brain mass, and analyze for any correlation with cancer rates, in hopes of finding a direction for further research.”

We’ll be letting you know how they and the other students interns are getting on as the semester progresses.

boredomresearch (aka Vicky Isley and Paul Smith) have been commissioned to create a new artwork, a digital visualization of cancer. This new work is scheduled to be shown at the CDC Gallery in Washington D.C., and major teaching hospitals around the...

Audio broadcast with Dany Spencer Adams describing how electrical fields offer new ways to study cancer.

In a public lecture entitled Why Cancer Is Everywhere, at Harvard Museum of Natural History last week, Athena Aktipis described her ACE research into the behavior of ‘cheating’ cells. These are cells that refuse to obey signals to conform to the agenda of the whole organism but instead forge their own agenda following evolutionary imperatives to proliferate and colonize new environments – the end result being cancer. Read a review of Athena’s talk by Harvard Correspondent, Brett Milano, here.