Free Republic

A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist won a legal victory this week after losing his position following sexual misconduct allegations made by a female colleague. Dr. David Sabatini, a former MIT biology professor and prominent biomedical researcher, was awarded $6 million in damages Friday after a jury found that his former colleague, Dr. Kristin Knouse, had defamed him. SNIP In 2021, Sabatini lost his position at Whitehead following an internal investigation into allegations made by Dr. Kristin Knouse, a younger colleague who worked at the institute. The pair met in 2012 and began a sexual relationship in 2018,...

My boss's wife just had a large melanoma removed from her back. They think she may have a small ocular melanoma. My family had a bad experience with that type of cancer in a relative. Do any of you have any knowledge of the best place in the country to be treated for melanoma? Thanks.

Barbara Barrie has died with medical assistance. The Oscar-nominated actress died Wednesday at her home in Manhattan, the New York Times reported. Her daughter, Jane Harnick, said her death was medically assisted after she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Barrie was 95 years old. Cancer was not her only health battle. She was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2014, which, according to the Mayo Clinic, is a degenerative disease that occurs when lung tissue becomes damaged and scarred, making it hard to breathe. Barrie was an accomplished actress, winning the Cannes Film Festival award for best actress in...

Susan Saint James, best known for her roles in TV series “Kate & Allie” and “McMillan & Wife,” has died. She was 80. A rep for the actress confirmed her death to People Tuesday, sharing she passed away on Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. In a statement shared with the outlet, her family remember Saint James as someone who was “generous with her time and energy, which she valued more than money, and instinctively drawn to whoever needed lifting up. She taught her children to pause, be kind and look out for other people.” They continued, “She never...

The results are seen as a boost to field of cancer vaccine research. A new personalized mRNA vaccine for melanoma is being hailed by some oncologists as a major breakthrough after it reduced the risk of cancer recurrence and death by 42% compared with standard treatment in a late-stage clinical trial. Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research, said the results are a “game changer.” “It will be seen as the first step toward using cancer vaccines to their full potential,” said Vonderheide, who was not involved in...

As smoking makes a comeback among Silicon Valley founders and engineers, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says some AI researchers are lighting up to signal their belief that the technology will cure cancer, calling it a form of “mass psychosis.” Speaking with Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan Sunday, Sankar argued that some people building artificial general intelligence (AGI) have developed an almost religious faith in the technology, while others’ warnings about its dangers are driven by their own ideological beliefs. The X account Fireside Alpha shared a clip. [Palantir CTO reveals AI researchers are taking up smoking to signal to other...

While Pope Leo's lung cancer diagnosis may have come as a shock to Catholics this week, the prognosis is likely a lot less scary. The cancer, adenocarcinoma, is a common one, and while worrisome if caught late, has a track record of high rates of survival with early intervention. "The fact that surgery was the first tool that they utilized is a really good sign," says Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and board member of the American Lung Association. "It suggests that they think this is early stage." Leo underwent surgery in Rome on Tuesday, which he announced over the...

A Wyoming microbiology graduate student from China has been arrested on accusations she poisoned the tea of a colleague who had pending patents, then tried to flee the U.S. after police questioned her. Aili Wang, 32, was arrested Oct. 6 at Los Angeles International Airport, where prosecutors allege she sought to return to China. With her were "multiple" laptops, electronic storage devices and documents now in the possession of police. Investigators say Wang was seen on surveillance video rummaging through the desk of the alleged victim, who specialized in technology for disease treatment — research similar to work Wang had...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health advisers on Wednesday endorsed a blood test designed to spot signs of various cancers in apparently healthy people while warning that it’s far from clear how well the technology works. Grail Inc.’s Galleri test doesn’t diagnose cancer but instead, with a single blood draw, looks for a signal that someone may have one of a long list of tumors. Those who receive a positive result need additional care to tell if they’re really sick. The Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel voted 7-2, with one abstention, that the DNA-based test offers more potential benefits than...

He’s the Doogie Howser of the dorms! A 13-year-old Long Island whiz kid with an Einstein-level IQ has been accepted to NYU’s master program — after overcoming cancer and Tourette’s syndrome, according to school officials and his mom. Pint-sized prodigy Joe Petraro-Hyppolite plans to study sports medicine at the university next fall and will likely be the school’s youngest grad student ever, according to reports. “My IQ is 168,” Joe Petraro-Hyppolite, of East Rockaway, told CBS. “Whenever I tell people, it’s like, ‘Oh, Young Sheldon, Doogie Howser.’” By comparison, Albert Einstein’s IQ is believed to have been around 160, which...

The key to slowing deadly brain tumors could be right on our plates. Gliomas are a group of tumors that develop in the brain or spinal cord and can range from slow-growing — like the one Busy Philipps was diagnosed with this year — to highly aggressive, like the ones John McCain, Beau Biden and Sophie Kinsella had. New research from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health may have found a way to slow down the growth of these tumors — and it could come down to what people eat. A study published Tuesday found that high-grade...

There is plenty Republicans and Democrats can disagree about when it comes to Joe Biden. His health shouldn't be one of them. The former president has been fighting an aggressive form of Stage 4 prostate cancer that spread to his bones, and some of the recent updates from his family have been difficult to hear. On Tuesday, Americans finally got some good news. Biden announced that the radiation treatment he underwent last fall “worked as intended,” while revealing that he remains active and is continuing to work on his memoir.That's a welcome update regardless of anyone's politics. Biden, now 83,...

Spanish researchers achieve complete tumor regression in animal models, opening new possibilities for one of medicine's deadliest cancersIn a promising development for pancreatic cancer treatment, scientists at Spain's National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have successfully eliminated pancreatic tumors in mice using a triple-combination therapy. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on January 25, 2026. This represents a significant advance in tackling pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), one of the deadliest cancers. PDAC has one of the lowest survival rates, with over 10,300 new patients diagnosed annually in Spain alone, and a devastating five-year...

Dolly Parton‘s reps have revealed her cause of death. The iconic singer died after a “brief battle” with cancer at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, her reps said Tuesday. “Our beloved Dolly Parton spent her life and career bringing joy, laughter, hope and integrity into everything she touched. Her unmatched generosity reached the lives of countless people whom she would never meet, yet she was always there to offer a helping hand,” the statement from her reps to People magazine read.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a groundbreaking pancreatic cancer drug that experts predict will transform treatment for the notoriously deadly disease. The drug, Revolution Medicines’ Rasonque, or daraxonrasib, was approved for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who have already tried a prior treatment, such as chemotherapy, the agency said. In a late-stage clinical trial of 500 patients, people who got the drug lived about twice as long — 13.2 months, on average — compared with people who got chemotherapy. Dr. Rachna Shroff, chief of the division of hematology and oncology at the University of Arizona Cancer Center...

The US Food and Drug Administration announced today that it has approved a groundbreaking new treatment option for pancreatic cancer. Manufactured by Revolution Medicines, daraxonrasib made headlines earlier this year when former US Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., shared details about his experience with the drug — which left his skin bloody and “bubbling” but is also giving him more time with his family amid his battled with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Moderna stock more than doubled Wednesday after the biotechnology company and Merck announced that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine significantly delayed the return and spread of melanoma in a late-stage clinical trial. The breakthrough could give Moderna its most important commercial opportunity since COVID-19, strengthen Merck’s dominant Keytruda franchise and open the door to an entirely new class of individualized cancer treatments. However, investors should recognize that the companies have released only topline results, while detailed efficacy data, regulatory decisions, manufacturing economics and overall-survival results remain outstanding.Moderna’s long-promised second act may finally be coming into focus.Shares of Moderna jumped approximately...

Northwestern University economist Chuck Manski studies decision-making amid uncertainty. That prepared him better than many other cancer patients to decide whether to stay on an immunotherapy treatment that was making him very ill. For six months in 2022, Manski received monthly infusions of nivolumab to fight advanced melanoma. The drug ruined his thyroid gland, he said, requiring him to go on a special medication for the rest of his life, and caused severe dryness in his eyes, lips, and mouth. The Food and Drug Administration’s protocol for the drug called for an entire year of treatment, but Manski said his...

Shares of Merck (MRK) and Moderna (MRNA) spiked in the premarket on Wednesday after the companies said that their jointly developed messenger RNA-based cancer therapy, intismeran autogene, succeeded in a late-stage trial for patients with melanoma, a type of skin cancer. The Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial was designed to evaluate intismeran in combination with Merck's (MRK) blockbuster anti-PD-1 therapy Keytruda in more than 1,100 patients with stage IIB-IV melanoma whose cancer has been completely resected. According to its topline data, INTerpath-001 met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and a secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival, marking the first late-stage...

Inspired by the work of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School and the development of the COVID vaccine, Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, and Chaitanya Naimesh Parikh, PhD’26, have developed an immunotherapy using a cocktail of messenger RNAs (mRNA) that could potentially be transformative for pancreatic cancer treatment. The study, published in Nature Communications, combines immune cytokine and tumor-associated antigen mRNAs into a single injection to treat pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Approximately 50 percent of mice with pancreatic cancer treated with the mRNA immunotherapeutic cocktail saw complete tumor responses and more impressively, remained disease free for a year, even after...