News

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has announced its latest O’Neal Invests grants with awards worth $950,000 that will advance new cancer-related projects and initiatives and enable competitive extramural applications.

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.

September is Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month, so it’s a good time to learn about the risks of these types of cancer and options for prevention and screening. All women are at risk for gynecologic cancers, and those risks increase with age. The information below outlines basic facts every woman should know.

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.

Physicians at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine’s Department of Radiation Oncology recently began providing stereotactic body radiation therapy, or SBRT, to lung cancer patients at UAB Medicine’s Russell Medical Cancer Center in Alexander City, Alabama.

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.

Metastatic bladder cancer is generally incurable, so new therapies are an urgent need. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham now report a potential treatment for a quarter of bladder cancers.

Nearly 32 years ago, Jeana Nesmith Russell was beginning her dream career as a nurse in one of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s hospital units while pursuing her graduate degree.

As the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB celebrates the 50th anniversary of its first core grant from the National Cancer Institute, its comprehensive vision comes full circle in this retrospective on the history of the NCI designations that started it all.

Mothers delivering newborns at the University of Alabama at Birmingham now can donate their newborn’s umbilical cord blood to LifeSouth Cord Blood Bank, a public FDA-licensed cord blood bank of LifeSouth Community Blood Centers. Donating cord blood is painless for mother and baby, and there is no charge for the lifesaving service.

The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the only National Cancer Institute-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Alabama and in a four-state region, celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer.

Andres Forero, M.D.A new University of Alabama at Birmingham research study reports that brentuximab vedotin is an effective and safe first course of treatment for older patients with Hodgkin lymphoma that cannot […]

National Cancer Survivors Day was Sunday, June 5. As frightening as a cancer diagnosis most certainly can be, the good news is that survival rates continue to improve, the number of cancer survivors continues to grow and the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has resources to help patients even after they are cancer-free.

On Dec. 19, 2019, Jennifer Hanna, M.D., Clinical assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Hospitalist with UAB Hospital Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was diagnosed with breast cancer after a biopsy for abnormal calcifications.  

Schools are out, and summer fun has begun. Between pool days and beach trips, people are outside enjoying nature and soaking in the bright summer sun. While spending time outside has positive health benefits, the sun can be a short- and long-term enemy.

For the first time in history, the world is on a path to permanently end cervical cancer. 

Anindya Dutta, MBBS, Ph.D., and colleagues have described a novel form of gene regulation that is altered in bladder cancer, leading to the boosting of a gene pathway that helps the cancer cells survive during rapid growth.

Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death among men and women in the United States and is among the most common cancers worldwide. However, there are some important differences in the types, causes, affects, and outcomes of lung cancer for women.

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center's first National Cancer Institute core grant and NCI designation, Bassel El-Rayes, M.D., joined the O'Neal Cancer Center in January 2022 to serve as the Cancer Center's new deputy director.

Looking back on the past 50 years of basic science research at the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB, cancer scientists reflect on the major discoveries that have paved the way for the future of cancer care.

For more than two decades, University of Alabama at Birmingham researcher Susan Bellis, Ph.D., has studied how the addition of sialic acid to various proteins increases cancer resistance and oncogenicity.

Four days after Matthew Snowden, 38, found out his wife was pregnant with their second child, he received some news he never thought he would hear — an oral cancer diagnosis.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Radiology is utilizing a special technology to help with tumor ablation therapy called the NanoKnife.