News

The O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center's Cancer Training & Career Development Office is proud to partner with Birmingham City Schools and Birmingham Promise to support young researchers like Kamari Marzette, who is featured in a recent commercial filmed in Wallace Tumor Institute.

In November 2020, retired Chief Master Sergeant Patrick McCrocklin visited the medical center at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., where he assumed he would be treated for a hernia. He actually had two hernias, but doctors also found two mysterious spots on his liver. MRI and PET scans revealed stage 4 colorectal cancer that had spread to his liver, and he was given just six months to live.

Providing comprehensive care for patients during their cancer journey includes helping them maintain their mental well-being – before, during, and after treatment. To help meet that need, the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB (OCCC) hosts online support groups for patients with specific types of cancer, as well as a new group for those with any type of cancer.

David Cole answers questions about his cancer journey and experience as a patient of the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Digestive Health Center will offer free colonoscopies to select patients of Cooper Green Mercy Health Services Authority through a grant from the Alabama Department of Public Health during Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month in March.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB will host the inaugural Edward E. Partridge, M.D., Lecture on Wednesday, April 5, at noon in Wallace Tumor Institute, Room 101. Phillip E. Castle, Ph.D., MPH, director of the Division of Cancer Prevention at the National Cancer Institute, will present “Human Papillomavirus and Cervical Cancer: At the Crossroads for Global Health Equity.”

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.

O'Neal Cancer Center Scientist Mehmet Akce, M.D., has been named the leader of the O’Neal Precision Medicine Working Group and Associate Director for Precision Oncology of the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute.

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

The Oral Oncology Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is taking patient imaging beyond flat screens with the new Brainlab Mixed Reality Viewer. This new platform uses mixed reality technology to showcase a hyper-realistic 3D view of patients’ head and neck tumors.

Certain cancer treatments can damage the heart and the cardiovascular system. The cardio-oncology clinic at the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at Acton Road is addressing that problem. The clinic offers comprehensive testing and specialized care to protect cancer patients undergoing therapies that can affect cardiovascular function.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has been designated a Center of Excellence by the American Initiative in Mast Cell Diseases Network. Mast cells are produced in the bone marrow and are an important part of the immune system. Mast cell diseases, such as mastocytosis, occur from an overabundance or overactivity of mast cells in the bone marrow and other organs.

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.

A cancer analysis web portal at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is serving cancer clinicians and researchers across the world in their search for cancer biomarkers, therapeutic target discovery and precision treatments to help patients.

In 2014, Edith Surles Lonon of Montgomery, Alabama, noticed swollen lymph nodes along her neck. She was recovering from shoulder replacement surgery, following doctor’s orders for physical therapy. Little did she know she had a far more serious journey ahead.

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.

The summer before Cameron Monistere started his senior year, he felt a lump in his throat. This was not the anxiety-induced, metaphorical kind. It was a physical one on his lymph node.

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.

When Beth Curles was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 1997, she notified only her close family. As an elementary school teacher in a small town in Georgia, she worried her community might stigmatize her diagnosis and treat her differently. For more than 15 years, she quietly battled her disease, until she was brought to the Center for Clinical and Translational Science’s Clinical Research Unit based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology hosted a Cervical Cancer Summit in collaboration with the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and Alabama Department of Public Health on Friday, Sept. 30, at the Marriott Birmingham Grandview Hotel as an effort to tackle cervical cancer in Alabama.

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.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States after skin cancer.