Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes - Investigations in Bioscience: How We May Defeat Cancer

This course will draw in a range of topics in biology, medicine, history, technology, and bioinformatics as it asks students to confront one of the most pressing questions in contemporary medicine: how can we defeat cancer? Students will develop familiarity with the fundamentals of cancer biology, research, and treatment even as they explore hot topics in oncology, including oncogenes, tumor suppressors, and cancer-causing viruses. To explore emerging therapeutic avenues, the course will investigate different treatment options for patients with different types of cancer, including radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. Focusing on new trends in cancer therapy, the course will dive into the potential and complications of the rapidly-developing field of immunotherapy, investigating CAR T-cells and the possibilities that emerge from engineering patients' immune cells. Finally, students will use bioinformatics and computational biology tools to assess tumors and evaluate the efficiency of new interventions.