Kathryn Haggerty
Mr. Ippolito
Core Biology
Current Event
October 2, 2018
October 2, 2018
“Scientists used Zika to kill aggressive brain cancer cells in mice”
Patel, Neel V. "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Popular Science. 21 Sept. 2018. Web. 04 Oct. 2018.https://www.popsci.com/zika-glioblastoma-cancer
For this week's current event, I read the article “Scientists Used ZIka to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice.” This article discusses the effects of using the Zika virus to prevent and, furthermore, save a living thing from cancer cells, particularly in the brain. Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and from China successfully used this Zika virus to create a vaccine of their own and use it to kill aggressive brain cancer, known as glioblastoma. This awful diseases kills most of it patients in less than two year and usually returns to the lucky few that survive the initially cancer. The team tested the vaccine out on mice without an immune system and found that it did not cause infection. In addition, the brain stayed intake and the no behavioral problems were recognized. More importantly, the researchers also tested the vaccine out on mice with the glioblastoma tumor, and the results were astonishing. The vaccine managed to reduce the amount of cancerous brain cells living inside the mice’s brain. This amazing discovery could one day lead to a potential cure for glioblastoma brain cancer. In other words, this article points to how many things that present themselves as dangerous to humans, could in turn save their lives.
This medical achievement has an enormous effect on society. In New York City alone, 496 people per year suffer from this disease. It is estimated that 16,830 adults in America will die from brain cancer every year. This number needs to be decreased. The overall effect of this Zika vaccine could greatly influence the survival of hundred upon hundreds of Americans. In turn, this discovered could also lead to the discoveries of other vaccines, for other diseases, located in the last place suspected. The fact that the things we look at as horrible and awful could actually be the things to save us at the end of the day, shows how crucial it is to look at things from every perspective. Pei-Yong Shi, a UTMB geneticist came up with initial idea to place the vaccine in mice to see the effect. “The vaccine managed to reduce tumor growth overall, and specifically target and kill off cancerous brain stem cells from both tumor lines, prolonging median rodent lives from 30 days to 48 days and 31 days to 53 days, respectively.” These results were astonishing. However, there are many downsides to the vaccine that many researchers have found. One being that mice and humans have different immune systems, which could drastically change the outcomes.
Overall, I believe that, the author Neel V. Patel, was extremely informative on the new discoveries of everyday life. He took something that is discarded as bad and made it good. The author used comprehensible language to bring across there point in an appropriate matter. In addition, the author added downsides to the article, which shows that the information in the text is not exactly correct. There is always room for fault in discoveries like these. For my critiques of the article, I believe that the author could’ve presented more background information on glioblastoma tumors and their overall effect on the world. I had to complete outside research in order to learn the daunting matter of the disease. In addition, Patel should’ve added more sources to support his claims. If he were to add two or three more scientists opinions on the matter, the credibility of the article would be so much stronger. Overall, Patel did a great job in bringing awareness to a crucial part of life. Without this, the chance of creating a vaccine for brain cell cancer would be slim to none at this point. In turn, I am looking forward to reading more of his articles in the future.
Kathryn, when reading your article I learned many things about the potential uses of deadly viruses when combating life threatening illnesses. In this case glioblastoma which is brain cancer. When talking about the discoveries made in your article there were several things that you did well. First you stated how the virus was introduced to the patient, meaning that researchers, “used this Zika virus to create a vaccine.” You also stated the statistics of brain cancer which, “estimated that 16,830 adults in America will die from brain cancer every year.” Adding this helped the reader realise the extent at which this new preseager may help others in the future. However you also pointed out, “that mice and humans have different immune systems.” Sating this was important since it showed the reader that more work had to be done before this new strategy could be used.
ReplyDeleteAlthough many things were done well in your article review, there were somethings that could have been done better. The first thing I would suggest is checking for sentence flow and making sure there were no typos. By doing this you could fix sentences such as this one, “the brain stayed intake and the no behavioral problems were recognized.” If you took out the “the” and changed “intake” to intact your sentence structure would have been a lot better. I would also suggest to double check word meanings. In this sentence, “He took something that is discarded as bad and made it good,” you used discarded instead of regarded. If you make these few changes your next review would be that much better.
When reading your review I learned a lot about potential uses for deadly viruses. I would have had no idea that the Zika virus could be used to help people. Especially since it causes so much damage to people. Now that I know that harmful things could be used in such a way I will be more careful when thinking about various problems. Because of this I may find more creative ways to deal will things in the future.
Patel, Neel V. "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Popular Science. 21 Sept. 2018. Web. 04 Oct. 2018.https://www.popsci.com/zika-glioblastoma-cancer
ReplyDeletehttps://bhscorebio.blogspot.com/2018/10/scientists-used-zika-to-kill-aggressive.html
Kathryn Haggerty was able to explain the purpose of the article really well and allowed me to gain a good understanding of what was happening in the article before I read it. I chose this because it is important to include otherwise your review will confuse people that may not know what is happening. She is very good at pointing out the importance and relevance of this articles. An example of this would be “This medical achievement has an enormous effect on society.” I chose this because it is important to strongly state how important something is because without having the importance the article is weak and the review and article have no purpose. Kathryn also uses great words to describe what she is using. This is important because it strengthens the review and makes it more credible.
A big place that Kathryn could improve is her grammar for example, “This awful diseases kills most of it patients in less than two year and usually returns to the lucky few that survive the initially cancer.” This sentence doesn’t make sense and it is grammatically incorrect. This takes away from the credibility and power of the article. This could be corrected by just reviewing the review before it is turned in and making sure their no mistakes. Kathryn could also add more quotes from the article or referencing the article more because without this the review can seem less credible. This can be corrected by adding more quotes from the article that relate to something in the review.
I found immensely amazing that this was possible because I knew nothing about this before and this seems like it could be revolutionary in the field of medicine. It really impressed me that this was scientifically possible. I chose this because it is just so fascinating and is very important to society. It will change the way I view the zika virus because before I saw it as only a negative that nothing positive could come out of it, but now I see that positive things can come out of it.
Katie Formato
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
Core Biology Honors
October 7 2018
Patel, Neel V. "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Popular Science. 21 Sept. 2018. Web. 04 Oct. 2018.
https://www.popsci.com/zika-glioblastoma-cancer.
My classmate Kathryn Haggerty wrote a review on the article “Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice.” by Neel V. Patel from Popular Science. Kathryn did a great job summarizing the article. Additionally, I think Kathryn did an excellent job taking the information that was given to her and re-writing it to make a great summary. Also, Kathryn mentioned that “when the vaccine managed to reduce the amount of cancerous brain cells living inside the mice’s brain. This amazing discovery could one day lead to a potential cure for glioblastoma brain cancer.” This is important because it shows that scientists have now started to find a cure that could later cure glioblastoma brain cancer. But not only this cancer but scientists now might be able to find cures for other cancers in the future. Additionally, I enjoyed how Kathryn provided a quote in her summary because it provides evidence from the article and while reading her summary I would not need to refer back to the main article for a quote. Finally, I appreciated how Kathryn used the data on the numbers of people battling the disease in the area. With her providing this, I was able to get an idea of how many suffer from this disease.
Although Kathryn wrote a concise and clear summary there were a few things that she could improve on. I wish that Kathryn could have talked about other types of cancer that has been used by this method, or if this is the first time scientists have done something like this. Kathryn also mentioned downsides of the zika vaccine but perhaps she could have explained further what the negative effects of humans taking the zika vaccine.
I chose this article because I learned a lot about cancer and different ways that it can be treated. When I read the title I wanted to read the summary as I started to wonder if different discoveries were leading to cures in cancer. I thought this article was very interesting and it makes me wonder what different types of cancer they can treat by using this method. This article definitely makes me think about what scientists are going to do next to find cures for cancer.
Jess Wagner
ReplyDeleteMr.Ippolito
Biology
Current Event 4
Patel, Neel V. "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Popular Science. 21 Sept. 2018. Web. 04 Oct. 2018.https://www.popsci.com/zika-glioblastoma-cancer
For this current event I chose to read Kathryn’s review on “Scientists used Zika to kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice” by Neel Patel. Kathryn did a really good job explaining the experiments and telling us how it was done and where it was tested. For example, she says “Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and from China successfully used this Zika virus to create a vaccine of their own and use it to kill aggressive brain cancer, known as glioblastoma.” This is important because it gives the readers more context on the article and helps us grasp an understanding of what is going on. She also did a really good job at telling us the effects it has and basically the statistics which is helpful, “This awful diseases kills most of it patients in less than two year and usually returns to the lucky few that survive the initially cancer.” She also repeated this in the paragraph below stating, “In New York City alone, 496 people per year suffer from this disease. It is estimated that 16,830 adults in America will die from brain cancer every year.” I thought that this was really shocking but it was important to the article because it’s smart to include results and effects because it gives the reader a sense of reality and doesn’t keep them guessing how many people are affected. I feel like this was a really good idea to include because after reading this I don’t feel like I need to do any research, she told us everything that we needed to know. Lastly, she did a good job explaining the vaccine and she provided the results as well which was interesting. She told us how it affected the mice and included examples of what it did, “The team tested the vaccine out on mice without an immune system and found that it did not cause infection. The vaccine managed to reduce the amount of cancerous brain cells living inside the mice’s brain.” The information she wrote about was very useful and gave us information on the process and how it worked on the mice.
Throughout her review I did think that there were probably a few things that could have had some improvement. I think when she was talking about the downsides of the experiment “there are many downsides to the vaccine that many researchers have found. One being that mice and humans have different immune systems, which could drastically change the outcomes.” She included only one example of how the outcomes could have been different and maybe it would have been more helpful if she added one more or two more. Another place where she could have improved was maybe if some people do not know what Zika is, then she could have briefly explained it in the beginning right when she says, “This article discusses the effects of using the Zika virus to prevent and, furthermore, save a living thing from cancer cells, particularly in the brain” After this she could have just included a quick description or definition.
In conclusion, this review was very sophisticated and really detailed with statistics and facts that contributed to the success of the review. I learned a lot about how Zika was tested on mice brains to try and kill cancer cells in the brain and the process of that. I found that Kathryn did a really great job at including background information and including important data that was very necessary to her review. I chose this review because I find cancer and new discoveries about it very interesting. I like to investigate and read about procedures that have been performed and reading about the results that occurred throughout the experiment. This changes my thoughts about Zika and opens my mind about what Zika actually is. I think that it is important for these types of experiments to be happening because it can cure many people and save people’s lives.
Today,, I read the article "Scientists used Zika to kill aggressive brain cancer cells in mice” written by Kathryn Haggerty. I really liked how she described how the researchers used the virus to kill the cancer cells, and I also liked how she gave numbers of the number of people that are affected by this disease, showing ho important this discovery is.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like how she never explained what the Zika virus was, because some people might not know. I feel like she could at least say what the virus does to people. I also think she should explain how this discovery can be used.
I learned that Zika could be used to cure cancer cells in humans and animals. I also never knew how many people were affected, until now. Overall, I think this article was well written and explained many things that I thought confusing.
Isabella Bouvard
ReplyDelete10/30/18
Core Biology 10H|Block C-Odd - Mr. Ippolito
Current Events #6
Patel, Neel V. "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Popular Science. 21 Sept. 2018. Web. 04 Oct. 2018.https://www.popsci.com/zika-glioblastoma-cancer
For this week’s current events, I reviewed Kathryn's previous writing on “Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice.” by Neel V. Patel. In my opinion, Kathryn did an excellent job summarizing the article. She described even that the author did not include much background information on glioblastoma, however incorporated it into her summary in a very concise manner. Kathryn did a good job at explaining the experiments conducted without going into too much detail, “The fact that the things we look at as horrible and awful could actually be the things to save us at the end of the day, shows how crucial it is to look at things from every perspective.” gives the reader more insight about a different stance that we must consider when looking at science, as this cure might be able to cure glioblastoma. This can even lead to the discovery of other cures for different types of cancer as well. The quote that Kathryn included as well in the beginning enhanced her writing and really drew the reader in. This was true with the data at the beginning of the second paragraph as well, “This medical achievement has an enormous effect on society. In New York City alone, 496 people per year suffer from this disease. It is estimated that 16,830 adults in America will die from brain cancer every year.” which puts the problem into full effect by making the reader consider how deadly glioblastoma can actually be.
Despite Kathryn’s amazing writing skills, there were a couple of things that could’ve been fixed in this passage. When talking about the downsides of the experiment, she really only provided one example as to this which was included very briefly and vaguely touched upon. I feel as if she could have involved more of these if possible, considering that for the majority of the article she only mentioned the positive outcomes primarily. In the middle of the second paragraph, she mentions “In turn, this discovered could also lead to the discoveries of other vaccines, for other diseases, located in the last place suspected.” I noticed that there was a couple places whereas Kathryn’s grammar should be tweaked, although this is a very small element of her writing which was off it is very crucial that everything is put into the right tense (“discoveries” in this instance”. If these small changes were made, Kathryn’s writing would most likely improve while writing future current events or current event comments in general.
To conclude, this article was written in a very detailed and sophisticated manner that contributed many facts and opinions as to the use of Zika to abolish glioblastoma. I always knew that vaccinations for viruses such as influenza were reversed engineered illnesses, however I could never think that the same concepts could be applied to cure cancer. She also described how the Zika virus was tested on mice brains to attempt to kill cancer cells in the brain and the process that scientists went through in order to test it. This article caught my eye because I didn’t think that modern technology could ever bring about a cure for cancer as such. However, I find discoveries in this area very interesting as cancer is a prominent issue that has increasingly faced the world throughout the past decade. This changes my overall understanding as it opens up a new perspective for me about the possibilities of deadly diseases that many people consider principally dangerous if one was to come into contact with it. Knowing this information can lead to many discoveries that may help people in this field. It is important for more of these experiments to be conducted as this new stance can maybe help to cure people one day.
Riley Morgan Nov 18 2018
ReplyDeleteBio Mr. I Current Event 8
“Scientists used Zika to kill aggressive brain cancer cells in mice”
Patel, Neel V. "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Popular Science. 21 Sept. 2018. Web. 04 Oct. 2018.https://www.popsci.com/zika-glioblastoma-cancer
For This week's current event, I read the blog post written by Kathryn Haggarty about the article “Scientists used Zika to kill aggressive brain cancer cells in mice” written by Neel Pastel. In this article is is discussed how the Zika virus can save living things from the fatal disease of cancer. Kathryn talks about how Researchers from U texas Medical, Branch have “ successfully used this Zika virus to create a vaccine of their own and use it to kill aggressive brain cancer known as glioblastoma.” This disease kills its patients in less than a two year period. There are only a few that survive says Kathryn. According the review the vaccine was tested on mice who had no immune system and the results were successful in the sense that it did not cause an infection. The vaccine also “managed to reduce the amount of cancerous brain cells living inside the mice’s brain” according to the review. Kathryn also states that she along with the researchers believe “it could one day lead to a potential cure for glioblastoma brain cancer”. I chose this article because I have a big interest in anything medical. I love reading articles about medical advancements especially about the brain. The title of this article which is “Scientists used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice” was a very capturing one and immediately made me want to read the review about it. II also found it fascinating how they are using another virus to cure a deadly disease.
Kathryn did a very good job at explaining the contents of the article and made it sound very intriguing. The only part I found somewhat misleading was the importance paragraph. Kathryn did not back up her evidence claiming that this vaccine would completely cure brain cancer which was her claim for importance. When she stated: “The overall effect of this Zika vaccine could greatly influence the survival of hundred upon hundreds of Americans. In turn, this discovered could also lead to the discoveries of other vaccines, for other diseases, located in the last place suspected” she did not provide any real evidence supporting that this is a fact rather than just an opinion. Besides this misconception I did not find anything else particularly wrong with this article.
While reading this article I became better informed about how something that was meant to kill can actually be a cure for something else. I specifically learned how Zika may be able to cure Brain cancer. This will change my impression to never underestimate something because even though it may be deadly towards one thing it could save another. I chose this article because I found this medical advancement very intriguing and I could tell it was going to be good just from reading the article.
Ben Davis
ReplyDeleteMarch 19, 2019
Core Biology
Current Event 6
Patel, Neel V. "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Popular
Science. 21 Sept. 2018. Web. 04 Oct.
2018.https://www.popsci.com/zika-glioblastoma-cancer
For this week's current event I read Kathryn Haggerty’s review of Neel Patel's article "Scientists Used Zika to Kill Aggressive Brain Cancer Cells in Mice." Kathryn did many things well in her review of the article. She first introduced the main idea of the article, which made it so I knew what the article was about. Kathryn wrote, “This article discusses the effects of using the Zika virus to prevent and, furthermore, save a living thing from cancer cells, particularly in the brain.” Another thing Kathryn did well was include examples of studies people have done. Kathryn said, “Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and from China successfully used this Zika virus to create a vaccine of their own and use it to kill aggressive brain cancer, known as glioblastoma.” This study gave credibility to what Kathyrn and the author were saying. Kathryn also did a good job getting across the amount of people affected by the disease. She wrote, “ This medical achievement has an enormous effect on society. In New York City alone, 496 people per year suffer from this disease. It is estimated that 16,830 adults in America will die from brain cancer every year. This number needs to be decreased.” These numbers show the importance of find a cure to the disease.
Kathryn’s did many things well in her however, there are somethings that she could have been done better. Kathryn should have better checked for sentence flow and made sure there were no grammatical and spelling mistakes. One of her mistakes was, “the brain stayed intake and the no behavioral problems were recognized.” If she had taken out the “the” and changed “intake” to intact the sentence would have been a lot better. Next time Kathryn does a review like this I think she should add more quotes from the article. This would make her claims more accurate and give the reader a sense of what the author originally wrote.
I learned a lot from Kathryn’s review. Perhaps, the thing I will remember most is that people can use animal testing to better human life. If animal testing has the abilities to cure brain cancer I think it is completely ethical because at the end of the day a humans life is more important than the life of a mouse. I chose to read Kathryn's review because I though animal testing was somewhat evil. I wanted to know if it really benefited the lives of humans. This changed my perception of animal testing I realize animal testing should only done to save humans lives. It should not be done to test soaps and other irrelevant things.