In high school, I once learned about this idea (which ended up becoming one of my favorite applications of physics) called magnetic hyperthermia. It’s an experimental technique for using hyperthermia to fight cancer. It consists on introducing magnetic nanoparticles to cancerous cells and generating an alternating magnetic field. This alternating magnetic field makes the nanoparticles rotate, which generates heat, which in turn either kills the tumor cells or makes them more susceptible to other types of cancer treatment.
Although I got really excited after learning about this, I never really got to learn more about other types of cancer treatment, or learn much about cancer itself.
To make matter worse, since I’m a physics major, I completely stopped having contact with areas such as chemistry and biology after high school. In this sense, when I saw there was a Table Talk on immuno-oncology last Monday, I immediately wanted to hear more about it.

I’ve learned how there are two main ways of fighting cancer through immunotherapy. The first of them consists on modifying, in a laboratory, a portion of the person’s T-cells, stimulating the generation of cancer-specific antigen receptors in them. Those cells are then introduced back to the body to destroy cancerous cells and multiply themselves (this is called the “CAR T-cell” treatment). The other one consists on helping the immune system to identify tumors: by using substances called “checkpoint inhibitors”, the treatment inhibits an interaction between T-cells and cancer cells which would otherwise prevent the immune response. In this way, it allows the detection and destruction of those cancerous cells.

It’s amazing, to me, how there are so many ways of tackling the same issue of cancer, each with its own benefits and risks, and which use completely different ideas from entirely different areas of study. I absolutely loved learning (even if only a bit) about the immunotherapy side of it (which, as I mentioned earlier, is something I probably wouldn’t otherwise learn about). Shiv explained the ideas in a way a layman like me can understand, and even sent us articles and videos to learn more after the talk. I’m really happy to have “opened my eyes” a bit more to these important ideas/techniques I had never heard about before, so I’m very glad I attended the event!