HEADLINES

For patients with eye cancer, University of Florida Health ophthalmology specialist Gibran S. Khurshid, M.D., is sowing seeds of hope.

In Khurshid’s case, those seeds are tiny particles of radioactive iodine. Attached to a gold implant about the size of a contact lens, the “seeds” deliver tightly focused radiation to eye cancer, oruveal melanoma. Khurshid, an associate professor in the UF College of Medicine’s department of ophthalmology, began doing the procedures earlier this year.

A large study led by a UF Health population scientist examined data from more than 193,000 women age 65 and older and found a positive association between breast density and breast cancer risk.

The study fills a gap of information with possible implications on the decision-making of older women considering a breast cancer screening mammography, said the study’s senior author, Dejana Braithwaite, Ph.D., the associate director of population sciences at the UF Health Cancer Center.

Researchers at University of Florida Health and the OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network are using big data analytics to scale up research and boost care and treatment options for people affected by three potentially debilitating rare diseases.

Study teams at UF Health will conduct research on preserving kidney function in children with chronic kidney disease and treating rare neuroendocrine cancers in adults.

Breast cancer is the deadliest and most common type of cancer in women. The treatment options often require administration of anti-cancer drugs in high doses, as the cells develop resistance towards chemotherapy, leading to painful side effects in patients.

Recently, researchers have identified that reducing the level of a protein called DSS1 can increase patients’ responsiveness to chemotherapy, therefore lowering the doses of the drug as well as the chances of side effects in patients.

According to a study published in Gastroenterology by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and University of Florida Health, Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and Asian Americans remain conspicuously absent from pancreatic cancer clinical trials aimed at testing the most recent treatment advances for this deadly disease.

“We’re just now making it a requirement to report, but there’s no true requirement as far as who needs to be included in clinical trials. I find that shocking,” said Kelly Herremans, M.D., study lead author and surgical resident in the UF College of Medicine.

Merry Jennifer Markham, M.D., expresses concern for cancer patients and survivors effects from COVID-19 in an interview with Healio.

“Before the delta variant was really running rampant, I was advising my patients who are vaccinated against COVID-19 that it’s probably okay to dine in a restaurant, as long as they are just cautious in general,” Markham said. “Now, especially for the unvaccinated cancer survivors, the risk is so great that my guidance for patients is to treat it as if we were at the very beginning of the pandemic.”