Category: Research

Immunotherapy is a common type of treatment that uses the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer and other diseases. Gynecologic cancers are treated in different ways, but immunotherapy is becoming more common in treating cervical cancer, uterine (endometrial) cancer, and other cancers that start in women’s reproductive organs.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center wants to thank everyone for their support and participation during October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From Witches Rides to 5K runs, below are some photos highlighting events from around the greater Birmingham area.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center is recruiting women in Alabama to join the WISDOM study, or Women Informed to Screen Depending On Measures of risk, which is an innovative national research study designed to test a personalized approach to breast cancer screening and prevention.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB hosted its 23rd annual Research Retreat Friday, October 13, at Regions Field. More than 350 attendees joined the day-long event.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB is pleased to announce its latest O’Neal Invests grant awards. O’Neal Invests funds UAB investigators initiating new cancer-related projects to do key preliminary work to enable competitive extramural applications. Applications for the seventh grant cycle were submitted in Spring 2023.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB is pleased to announce that the Mike Slive Foundation has generously funded a Pre-R01 grant through the spring cycle of O’Neal Invests.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB is pleased to announce that the Breast Cancer Resesarch Foundation of Alabama (BCRFA) has generously funded a Pre-R01 grant through the spring cycle of O’Neal Invests.

Birmingham’s Pepper Place has a striking new addition to its teeming farmers’ market and noted food offerings — a multimillion-dollar cancer research laboratory. 

A full course of radiation therapy in milliseconds rather than weeks: That’s the promise of flash therapy.

Alabama is one of three states currently offering an ovarian cancer car tag — and it is changing the future of ovarian cancer research. Since the tag’s inception, proceeds from each ovarian cancer car tag purchased have gone directly to the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Division of Gynecologic Oncology to support ovarian cancer research.

UAB was well represented at one of the signature oncology conferences this year, ASCO, held in Chicago, Illinois, from May 31–June 4.

Markus Bredel, M.D., Ph.D., is lead author on “Haploinsufficiency of NFKBIA reshapes the epigenome antipodal to the IDH mutation and imparts disease fate in diffuse gliomas” in Cell Reports Medicine (2023). This groundbreaking discovery not only marks a significant milestone in our understanding of diffuse gliomas but also paves the way for improved predictions of disease outcomes and the development of targeted treatment approaches.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB recently awarded six projects a total of $530,000 in research grants through O'Neal Invests. The O’Neal Invests program funds UAB investigators initiating new cancer-related projects to do key, preliminary work in order to enable competitive R01 applications.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama recently awarded eight researchers at the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB a total of $800,000 in breast cancer research funding.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama recently awarded $320,000 in funding to two researchers at the O'Neal Cancer Center.

A researcher from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Engineering has received a $1.4 million, three-year grant to research systemic toxicities in breast cancer. Toxicity is the main dose-limiting factor in cancer treatments. Developing methods to control it could dramatically impact patient health.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama today announced a total investment of $1,275,000 in Alabama-based breast cancer research in 2022.

Though lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the nation, physicians at the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham want patients to know about the advancements in diagnostic technologies and therapies, as well as new screening guidelines, which provide more hope for lung cancer patients than ever before.

New research from University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers is shedding light on racial disparities in breast cancer mortality in women who live in economically deprived neighborhoods.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Division of Gynecologic Oncology has received $120,000 to further ovarian cancer research from the Norma Livingston Ovarian Cancer Foundation.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine’s Department of Radiation Oncology researchers have identified potential targets to help overcome therapy-resistant tumors in patients with glioblastoma, the most common and devastating form of primary brain cancer. 

Over the last decade, immune checkpoint blockers, or ICBs, have revolutionized treatment for various advanced cancers, including melanoma, the most aggressive skin cancer that was considered largely incurable not long ago. However, three-fourths of advanced-melanoma patients are resistant to ICBs.

Melanoma is a highly aggressive skin cancer that frequently metastasizes, but current therapies benefit only some patients. Finding new ways to treat melanoma and other cancers is crucial because of the high prevalence of acquired resistance to currently used therapy for treating patients.

New recommendations from the Lancet Commission on COPD, including from Commission Chair Mark Dransfield, M.D., division director of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, outline ways to eliminate and control COPD worldwide.