Nick DeVito

Another life lost too young to colorectal cancer, RIP James Van Der Beek. The time for better prevention, screening, and treatment is now. #CureCRC

“I am shocked and appalled,” one NCI scientist said. “We are moving funds away from so much promising research in order to do a preclinical study based on nonscientific ideas. It’s absurd.”

2026 CRUSH Colorectal Cancer 5k Welcome to My Personal Page

The CRUSH CRC 5K is just over a month away!

join our team here:

www.supportdukehealth.org/site/TR/Colo...

l-Fucose: a dietary sugar with multifaceted potential in the biology and therapy of cancer - Nature Reviews Cancer The conjugation of glycoproteins and glycolipids with the dietary sugar L-fucose is known as fucosylation. In this Progress article, Bitaraf et al. describe the latest work showing how fucosylation is deregulated in cancer, influencing tumour progression and therapeutic responses, and how it might be leveraged to treat cancer.

🚨 #REVIEW #PROGRESS 🚨

Fucosylation—the attachment of the dietary sugar L‑fucose to glycoproteins & glycolipids—is frequently altered in cancer. Bitaraf et al. outline its role in tumour progression and therapeutic response.

📖 👇

A Call to Consider Patients' Medication List When Prescribing Cancer Immunotherapy Dozens of drugs can alter the immune system and affect activity of immune checkpoint inhibitors

Thanks to @medpagetoday.com for interviewing me about our recent @jco-asco.bsky.social commentary on how medications can influence immunotherapy!

www.medpagetoday.com/hematologyon...

Over-the-Counter Medications May Alter Cancer Immunotherapy Outcomes DURHAM, N.C. – Immunotherapy is offering new hope for cancers that once had grim prognoses by harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight the disease, often sparing patients from the harsh side e...

I appreciate the write up from @dukemedschool.bsky.social on our recent @jco-asco.bsky.social commentary regarding how common medications can interact with immunotherapy!

corporate.dukehealth.org/news/over-co...

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane because it often results in physical death" - Dr. MLK Jr.

My mom ran the HIV prevention program for Hillsborough county (before it was shut down by Jeb Bush) which was one of my first volunteering experiences, inspiring me to pursue medicine. I witnessed so much pain, and many people are still suffering - the depth of this cruelty cannot be overstated.

New @naturemedicine.bsky.social
The power of our mind to shape immune response, as seen in a randomized trial of trained neurofeedback for increased reward activity. More positive expectation-> more antibody response nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com/articles/s41...

Anti-PD-1 > Anti-PD-L1, due to the existence of PD-L2. It may explain why PD-L1 is such a meh biomarker in many tumors, too.

ascopubs.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Addressing Common Medications That Influence Immunotherapy Response in Solid Tumors

Here is our publication in @jco-asco.bsky.social! We describe how common medications impact immunotherapy, how this affects practice and patients today, and outline ways to leverage this knowledge toward improved patient as well as our understanding of tumor immunology.

ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/...

For the first time, the five-year survival rate for all cancers has reached 70 percent, according to a new report, a trend that reflects the effectiveness of early prevention and detection strategies, and advancements in treatment and care, experts say. https://wapo.st/45T6Zm3

***improved patient outcomes (need an edit feature!)

In summary: If we don't look, we don't know! we cover the immunotherapy compromising effects of corticosteroids and acetaminophen, and potentially beneficial effects of SSRIs, statins, GLP1 agonists, anti-histamines, and PCSK9 inhibitors. We can study this in many settings to modify management!

Addressing Common Medications That Influence Immunotherapy Response in Solid Tumors

Here is our publication in @jco-asco.bsky.social! We describe how common medications impact immunotherapy, how this affects practice and patients today, and outline ways to leverage this knowledge toward improved patient as well as our understanding of tumor immunology.

ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/...

I don't think you non-science people realize what it takes to get a grant funded by NIH. Started experiments in Sept 2021 to generate 3 new mouse mutants to model human disease. Prelim dara shows they have relevant disease phenotypes worthy of study. Need a small grant first to characterize /1

Figure showing the types of therapeutic cancer vaccines, The vaccines have been classified into four categories by how the antigens are selected and where the antigens are co-localised with antigen-presenting cells. Copyright: 2025 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved.

🗨️ “Vaccines have done more to improve public health than any other medical intervention.”

A Viewpoint focuses on cancer vaccines and the future of immunotherapy: spkl.io/63322AYP7k

For every trainee who succeeds at getting some super difficult experiment to yield interesting results, there are another dozen who fruitlessly spun their wheels for years. My advice: explore many technically feasible experiments and follow up on interesting leads

Hepatic adaptation to chronic metabolic stress primes tumorigenesis Environmental stresses, such as a high-fat diet, disrupt liver cell balance by promoting pro-survival, developmental, and regenerative programs while impairing key tissue functions. These stress respo...

High fat diets “ready the soil” for cancer to grow in the liver. This has been inferred to many degrees for years but its good to see some mechanism:

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Americans & Europeans needlessly exposing African babies to preventable diseases just to see if they can find something that would justify their preexisting antivaccine beliefs is not only unscientific and actually anti-science, it is very much reminiscent of colonialist, racist human rights abuses

At the colorectal cancer alliance summit, where the goal is very, very clear:

Important PSA:

Scoop: FDA vaccine chief’s memo cited 10 pediatric Covid-19 vaccine deaths—but the agency’s own analysis found 0–7. Dr. Vinay Prasad circulated a memo before FDA scientists finished their work. His conclusions overshot what the agency’s own analysts ultimately found.

Prasad, Makary and others who claim that COVID19 vaccines killed 10 children are not telling the truth.

According to @jeremyfaust.bsky.social, the committee that worked on this question reported that there were ZERO deaths that they were certain were caused by the vaccines.

Well worth reading.

Architecture of the neutrophil compartment - Nature Mapping of the neutrophil compartment using single-cell transcriptional data from multiple physiological and patological states reveals its organizational architecture and how cell state dynamics and ...

#NeutrophilPower! @dcerezowallis.bsky.social, Rubio-Ponce, Ballesteros, Ng, @drusqui.bsky.social &co present @nature.com NeuMap, a neutrophil atlas across health & disease states in mice (& humans)! So happy to see this out! 💪💪💪 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The biggest clue to cranks that there is no vaccine conspiracy is that Doctors and Scientists continue to vaccinate their own children at record rates.

Save the date: Saturday, March 14th, 2026 join us for the CRUSH Colorectal Cancer 5K at The River Church in Durham.

Support our patients, advocates/caregivers, researchers, and community at this incredible event - You will not want to miss our speakers!

"Never spread the lie in the headline" should be a hard rule of 21st century journalism.

Research shows that repeating lies helps to spread them, and people read headlines more than they read stories.

Prostaglandins in tumor immune response are often overlooked (a ‘been there done that’ mentality) - but there remains tremendous therapeutic opportunity in understanding this fundamental pathway.

As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings. Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission. Early in my illness, when I

Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...