full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Hasini Jayatilaka: How cancer cells communicate -- and how we can slow them down

Unscramble the Blue Letters


After years of conducting experiments together and merging different ideas and perspectives, we discovered a new signaling pathway that controls how cancer clles cmimnatucoe with each other and move, based on their cell density. Some of you might have heard this, because most of social media knows it as the Hasini effect.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And we weren't done yet. We then decided that we wanted to block this sianilngg pathway and see if we could slow down the spread of cancer. Which we did, in picaercnlil animal medols. We came up with a drug cocktail consisting of tocilizumab, which is currently used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, and reparixin, which is currently in clinical trials against breast cancer. And interestingly, what we found was that this cicaoktl of drugs really had no effect on tumor growth, but directly targeted metastases. This was a significant fniindg, because currently, there aren't any FDA-approved therapeutics that directly target the saperd of cancer.

Open Cloze


After years of conducting experiments together and merging different ideas and perspectives, we discovered a new signaling pathway that controls how cancer _____ ___________ with each other and move, based on their cell density. Some of you might have heard this, because most of social media knows it as the Hasini effect.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And we weren't done yet. We then decided that we wanted to block this _________ pathway and see if we could slow down the spread of cancer. Which we did, in ___________ animal ______. We came up with a drug cocktail consisting of tocilizumab, which is currently used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, and reparixin, which is currently in clinical trials against breast cancer. And interestingly, what we found was that this ________ of drugs really had no effect on tumor growth, but directly targeted metastases. This was a significant _______, because currently, there aren't any FDA-approved therapeutics that directly target the ______ of cancer.

Solution


  1. cocktail
  2. cells
  3. signaling
  4. preclinical
  5. models
  6. communicate
  7. finding
  8. spread

Original Text


After years of conducting experiments together and merging different ideas and perspectives, we discovered a new signaling pathway that controls how cancer cells communicate with each other and move, based on their cell density. Some of you might have heard this, because most of social media knows it as the Hasini effect.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And we weren't done yet. We then decided that we wanted to block this signaling pathway and see if we could slow down the spread of cancer. Which we did, in preclinical animal models. We came up with a drug cocktail consisting of tocilizumab, which is currently used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, and reparixin, which is currently in clinical trials against breast cancer. And interestingly, what we found was that this cocktail of drugs really had no effect on tumor growth, but directly targeted metastases. This was a significant finding, because currently, there aren't any FDA-approved therapeutics that directly target the spread of cancer.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
cancer cells 11
drug cocktail 3
hasini effect 3
primary site 2
breast cancer 2
closely packed 2
tumor microenvironment 2
plastic dishes 2
cells communicate 2
signaling pathway 2
clinical trials 2
tumor growth 2
terrible disease 2


Important Words


  1. animal
  2. applause
  3. arthritis
  4. based
  5. block
  6. breast
  7. cancer
  8. cell
  9. cells
  10. clinical
  11. cocktail
  12. communicate
  13. conducting
  14. consisting
  15. controls
  16. decided
  17. density
  18. discovered
  19. drug
  20. drugs
  21. effect
  22. experiments
  23. finding
  24. growth
  25. hasini
  26. heard
  27. ideas
  28. interestingly
  29. laughter
  30. media
  31. merging
  32. metastases
  33. models
  34. move
  35. pathway
  36. perspectives
  37. preclinical
  38. reparixin
  39. rheumatoid
  40. signaling
  41. significant
  42. slow
  43. social
  44. spread
  45. target
  46. targeted
  47. therapeutics
  48. tocilizumab
  49. treat
  50. trials
  51. tumor
  52. wanted
  53. years