Technology and Cancer Annotated Bibliography

Chandra, Pranjal, Yen N. Tan, and Surinder P. Singh. Next Generation Point-of-Care Biomedical Sensors Technologies for Cancer Diagnosis., 2017. Internet resource.

This book focuses on radiation therapy, as a treatment method. Cancer treatment is a global nightmare, and everyone is looking up to medical researchers and oncologists to develop an ultimate treatment method that completely eradicates cancer cells. This is because cancer cells are quite complicated bodies that keep on changing their morphology from time to time. Cancer may develop in one particular way, and end up changing as it moves from one cell to another. In such a pattern, studying cancer cells are quite troublesome because they display no define a morphological process that can aide the study process. Over time, there has been the development of cancer different treatment techniques exploiting diverse mechanisms of action, and radiation is of the significant contemporary methods. Today, there is much evidence citing the efficacy of the method thanks to the beams of carbon ions and protons. This approach has fueled the compilation of limitless tumor control, and this has led to its worldwide adaptation and use in the treatment of cancer cases. Naturally, a compilation of the tumors is a daunting task because the cancer cells quickly move from one cell to another. In this way, should there be an effective anticancer therapy, one would successfully treat one cell while the next cell, probably not known, is being infected by a different form of particular cancer killed in the previous cell. Thus, the book analyzes the physics alongside the state-of-the-art technological provisions used in this technique in which oncologists and other interested parties deploy the use of heavy particles in the management of cancer. A typical example is the use of biomarkers to detect prostate cancer through the immobilizing molecules of the PSA-antibodies (Chandra, Tan and Singh 242). The leading cancer centers are rapidly adopting this technology, and this shows the length to which the medical society is accepting this modality of cancer management.

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The book further draws contemporary and modern results on the research focusing on the detection of cancer cells that rely on non-biosensors. This confers an ultrasensitive point-of-care diagnosis of cancer among individuals. A typical scenario where this will work is in the case of prostate cancer in which there are diagnostic problems due to shortages of biomarkers designed for diagnostic screening. Normally, cancer cells and tumors are easily detected with the screening of the whole body. Among diseases that cause mortality, cancer is among the leading, and it has the potential of affecting human being in over one hundred distinct forms. This implies that the disease can morph into various distinct forms and still devastate human health. In the pursuit for solutions and therapeutic ways that can tame its morphology, and hence elucidate probable treatment or cure, scientists have developed and used cancer-cell detection approaches such as biopsy, conventional diagnostic, histopathology as well as the use of biomarkers. However, the findings have not been impressive because these techniques have been watered down and rendered anachronistic. This is a result of the fact that these techniques become less sensitive to cancer cells or instead, become less invasive to them as well, especially in the case of biopsy.

Proceeding on the biomarker-based detection techniques, the technique is not as viable as such because biomarkers' concentration in the human body is too low, especially in malignant cells as well as body fluids. This makes the detection of cancer cells an uphill task. As such, cancer cells do not respond positively when cancer patients are subjected to these therapeutic measures. This makes the management of advanced cancer cases quite daunting. The good news is that early detection of the presence of cancer cells could lead to a probable cure. When cancer is diagnosed early enough, and it is quite sensitive to these therapeutic conditions, the chances of curing them are quite high.

In seeking better ways of detecting the highly insensitive cancer cells, researchers and scientists have developed contemporary diagnosis techniques for detecting cancer cells. For instance, the biosensing technique in which surface materials are used in collaboration the biomarkers make the detection of cancerous cells and tumors quite easy (Chandra, Tan and Singh 59). That becomes the fundamental pillar of this book, and this is because it gathers and dissects the newly-developed point-of-care methods of cancer diagnosis through microfluidics, biomedical sensors as well as engineered integrated systems. Also, the book discusses miscellaneous cancer-detecting tests that are possible in remote laboratories. The primary technologies covered by the book include paper-based microfluidics, electrical sensors as well as any other available kid-based diagnostic techniques applicable in the detection of cancer cells.

Son, Joo-Hiuk, ed. Terahertz biomedical science and technology. CRC Press, 2014.

This essay focuses on the technological advancements taking shape, in oncology and the whole medical fraternity, in response to the increasing demand of the curative methods of cancer. Over time, there has a lot of research going on, and this led to the development of security screening, scientific spectroscopy as well as medical imaging. These are the products of the TeraHertz (THz) generation of detection techniques. Screening is a fundamental approach in the detection and identification of cancer occurrence. This demonstrates the use of THz in the imaging as well as tomography in medicine (Son 10). In cancer treatment, the earlier the diagnosis, the better chances the individual stands to undergo successful therapy. This is because there is a threshold for this that the tumors can no longer respond to treatment. It is only through screening that an individual will identify the present tumors as well as their locations. However, other tests such as mammograms are also recommended to supplement the screening of the whole body. This book is an in-depth analysis and an exploration of the emerging technological provisions picturing biological behaviors in the human body through the use of THz spectroscopy. This has helped in the imaging of cancer cells. A typical example is the imaging of body parts such as the female and male breast to detect cancer cells' absence or presence on the human breast. Through this, the author intended to draw contemporary examples of how technology impacts the search for effective cancer imaging.

The most significant of these techniques is through the THz spectroscopy. The process of carcinogenesis is marked by the methylation of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the first process in cancer development. Gene nutation follows this methylation of the DNA. It is the methylation process that the THz spectroscopy majors on as it detects the methylated cells. This makes it a novel pioneer method in oncology studies. The observation made at 1.65 THz is achieved by high-power radiation. However, its significance is limited to early stages of cancer because these stages express chemical manipulation of chemical effects induced by the cancerous cells as they grow.

There is also another dimension of the discussion about the significance and interplay between cancer and technology. Even though much of it is attributed to the combination of the drugs, curcumin has been lauded for its inhibitory and suppressive properties on cancer cells in three distinct ways; growth, angiogenesis and lastly, progression. This argument is under the support of the numerous in vitro and in vivo studies conducted on the subject. The mechanism through which this materializes is that curcumin suppresses the expression of the tumor cells as well as the genes of those particular cells. Howe, much of its efficacy relies on its combination with other anticancer drugs, and this makes it efficacious enough to handle colorectal, oral, pancreatic, lung and breast cancer.

The existence of genomics is also an instrumental subject in the management of cancer. Normally, any slight alterations in the cancerous cells fire a cascade of subsequent changes in every other cell. This is attributed to the packaging of the genomes into chromosomes. Thus, artificial induction of cancer-resistant properties to such cells could confer resistance to the growth and development of cancer in such cells. However, the most significant of the genomic aspects of cells is that by studying the features of a cancerous cell, there is a higher probability of identifying the cancerous properties of neighboring cells. In addition to this, the genomic properties of cancerous cells are a distinguishing factor that differentiates them. Because the study of cancerous cells reveals much information about their mechanisms of development, the creating and design of drugs that inhibit their growth, or instead, suppress them becomes hassle-free. There are cases where one can establish the subtypes of the cancerous by studying the type of cancer. This reveals fine details on cancer, and it is through such information that the development of the therapeutic measures is developed. To doctors, an understanding of the genomic properties informs the selection of the drugs prescribed to a patient. This is yet another way through which technology assists the personalization of medication to patients.

Reigstad, Marte Myhre, et al. "Risk of cancer in children conceived by assisted reproductive technology." Pediatrics137.3 (2016): e20152061.

In this book, assessment and evaluation of cancer risks between children conceived through Assisted Reproductive Therapy (ART) against those who are conceived naturally. Thus, it answers questions surrounding the relationship between cancer among children and ART. The study is motivated by the escalating statistics on the evaluation of these two distinct groups. The statistics indicating the number of children conceived this strategy was obtained from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway (Reigstad et al. 2). On the other hand, cancer data and statistics were obtained from Norway's Registry of Cancer, and these statistics spanned in between 1984 to 2011. In a follow-up procedure, children were monitored from their time of birth until the time of the first cancer diagnosis, emigration and finally death.

Out of the 1, 628, 658 assessed, 27, 782 belonged to the ART class. Among them, 4, 554 indicated cancer cases with which 51 children were coming from the class of children conceived through ART. However, the prevalence and risk of leukemia were reported to be significantly high among children conceived through ART. The use of Hazardous Rations (HR), as well as Coincidence Intervals (CI), also provided statistics of significance to the study. With the two approaches, there was a consistent and general enhanced cancer risk among children conceived through this technology. In addition to leukemia risks, children conceived through ART also indicated high-risk levels to Hodgkin's lymphoma. However, this conclusion was made after studying a pretty small group of the cohort. It thus becomes conclusive that there is increased predisposition to cancer, among children, due to the use of ART. The increased chances of cancer among children conceived via ART is attributed to the fact that the ART process exposes sperms and the oocytes to the carcinogenic properties possessed by the technology (Reigstad et al. 3). In this case, it predisposes healthy individuals to cancer. This is an illustration technology brings about the development of cancer among individuals.

Charmsaz, Sara, Maria, Principe, Kelly Maeve, Pidgeon P. Graham, and Collins M. Dennis. "Innovative Technologies C...