Tumor growth data.
What a powerful and and alarming topic.
As you and your husband prepared to meet with the doctors for an update on your condition, the tumor growth data tag listed on some internet research that you were doing caught your attention. Although you knew that this appointment would likely include information on the size and growth of the tumor that doctors found on your lungs three months ago, the thought that their might be so much information about your progress was far from comforting. The reality, however, is that terms like tumor growth data and tumor modeling are, indeed, the very items that provide doctors with the information that they need to slow, stop, or eliminate these life changing conditions.
The Latest 3D Cell Culture Methods Allow the Mathematical Modeling of Tumor Growth
If you are a cancer patient you likely understand that while cancer research has many observational tools available, the real process of treating the disease is often a combination of exact research and the most popular plans that doctors think will be effective. And while these popular treatment options are based on solid scientific data, the nature of cancer is that while some conditions are predictable, many are also difficult, if not impossible, to understand. For this reason, obviously, the diagnosis of cancer, an incurable condition, can be both frightening and frustrating as patients wait to hear test results and suggestions for treatment plans.
Consider some of these statistics about cancer, the people who are diagnosed with this disease, and the research techniques that are helping create treatment plans:
- For children under the age of 20, brain tumors are the leading cause of solid tumor death. This now surpasses acute lymphoblastic leukemia
- 200,000 people in America are diagnosed with a primary or metastatic brain tumor every single year. Of these, primary brain tumors comprise nearly 40,000 of these primary or metastatic brain tumor diagnoses.
- One of the reasons finding effective treatment options is that there are over 120 different types of brain tumors.
- The 3D epithelial organoid models have until very recently remained very limited even though the first use of this technology was first described over 40 years ago.
- Doing so for more than 50 years, bone marrow transplants continue to use stem cells to treat leukemia.
- 68% of Americans indicate that they support embryonic stem cell research.
- 64% of Americans support federal funding for research using stem cells taken from human embryos to understand chronic diseases.
- 39.6% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes.
- 14.5 million people in 2014 lived beyond an initial cancer diagnosis. This number is expected to rise to as many as 19 million by the year 2024.
- Cell to cell interactions, chemical gradients, extracellular matrix components, growth rates, and gene expression in their 3D forms have been shown to provide more clinical relevance when they are compared to cells in 2D cultures.
