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The use of social media continues to increase in health care and academia. Health care practice, particularly the oncologic field, is constantly changing because of new knowledge, evidence-based research, clinical trials, and government policies. Therefore, oncology trainees and professionals continue to strive to stay up-to-date with practice guidelines, research, and skills. Although social media as an educational and professional development tool is no longer completely new to medicine and has been embraced, it is still under-researched in terms of various outcomes. Social media plays several key roles in professional development and academic advancement. We reviewed the literature to evaluate how social media can be used for professional development and academic promotion of oncology professionals.

Decades of advancements in immuno-oncology have enabled the development of current immunotherapies, which provide long-term treatment responses in certain metastatic cancer patients. However, cures remain infrequent, and most patients ultimately succumb to treatment-refractory metastatic disease. Recent insights suggest that tumors at certain organ sites exhibit distinctive response patterns to immunotherapy and can even reduce antitumor immunity within anatomically distant tumors, suggesting the activation of tissue-specific immune tolerogenic mechanisms in some cases of therapy resistance. Specialized immune cells known as regulatory T cells (Tregs) are present within all tissues in the body and coordinate the suppression of excessive immune activation to curb autoimmunity and maintain immune homeostasis. Despite the high volume of research on Tregs, the findings have failed to reconcile tissue-specific Treg functions in organs, such as tolerance, tissue repair, and regeneration, with their suppression of local and systemic tumor immunity in the context of immunotherapy resistance. To improve the understanding of how the tissue-specific functions of Tregs impact cancer immunotherapy, we review the specialized role of Tregs in clinically common and challenging organ sites of cancer metastasis, highlight research that describes Treg impacts on tissue-specific and systemic immune regulation in the context of immunotherapy, and summarize ongoing work reporting clinically feasible strategies that combine the specific targeting of Tregs with systemic cancer immunotherapy. Improved knowledge of Tregs in the framework of their tissue-specific biology and clinical sites of organ metastasis will enable more precise targeting of immunotherapy and have profound implications for treating patients with metastatic cancer.

Simple Summary: Colorectal cancer (CRC) stands as the third most common cancer globally and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths, imposing a substantial health burden. Recent studies highlight a concerning rise in CRC rates among individuals below 50 years old, prompting the American Cancer Society (ACS) to recommend screening starting at age 45 for average-risk individuals. Dr. Aasma Shaukat's Keynote Conference stresses the urgent need for updated screening strategies to tackle suboptimal adherence rates and effectively manage the increasing burden of CRC. Lowering the adenoma detection screening age could aid in early identification of adenomas in asymptomatic younger patients, potentially reshaping disease epidemiology. Current screening options encompass stool-based tests like multitarget stool DNA (mtDNA) tests, fecal immunochemical testing (FIT), and imaging-based tests. Moreover, blood-based tests are emerging as promising tools for early CRC detection, utilizing innovative techniques and AI algorithms. Medicare mandates specific criteria for national coverage of blood-based tests. Ongoing clinical trials, such as Freenome, Guardant, and CancerSEEK, offer hope for further advancements in blood-based CRC screening. Despite breakthroughs, accessibility and affordability challenges persist. Adapting healthcare systems to accommodate changing CRC epidemiology is imperative. Lowering the screening age and integrating blood-based tests hold the potential to alleviate the CRC-related burden amidst evolving epidemiology. Colorectal cancer (CRC) currently ranks as the third most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, posing a significant global health burden to the population. Recent studies have reported the emergence of a new clinical picture of the disease, with a notable increase in CRC rates in younger populations of <50 years of age. The American Cancer Society (ACS) now recommends CRC screening starting at age 45 for average-risk individuals. Dr. Aasma Shaukat's Keynote Conference highlights the critical need for updated screening strategies, with an emphasis on addressing the suboptimal adherence rates and the effective management of the growing burden of CRC. Lowering the adenoma detection screening age can facilitate early identification of adenomas in younger asymptomatic patients, altering the epidemiologic landscape. However, its implications may not be as profound unless a drastic shift in the age distribution of CRC is observed. Currently, various screening options are available in practice, including stool-based tests like multitarget stool DNA (mtDNA) tests, fecal immunochemical testing (FIT), and imaging-based tests. In addition to existing screening methods, blood-based tests are now emerging as promising tools for early CRC detection. These tests leverage innovative techniques along with AI and machine learning algorithms, aiding in tumor detection at a significantly earlier stage, which was not possible before. Medicare mandates specific criteria for national coverage of blood-based tests, including sensitivity ≥ 74%, specificity ≥ 90%, FDA approval, and inclusion in professional society guidelines. Ongoing clinical trials, such as Freenome, Guardant, and CancerSEEK, offer hope for further advancements in blood-based CRC screening. The development of multicancer early detection tests like GRAIL demonstrates a tremendous potential for detecting various solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. Despite these breakthroughs, the question of accessibility and affordability still stands. The ever-evolving landscape of CRC screening reflects the strength of the scientific field in light of an altered disease epidemiology. Lowering screening age along with the integration of blood-based tests with existing screening methods holds great potential in reducing the CRC-related burden. At the same time, it is increasingly important to address the challenges of adaptation of the healthcare system to this change in the epidemiologic paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Growing evidence suggests that the majority of tumors are organized hierarchically, comprising a population of tumor-initiating, or cancer stem cells (CSCs) responsible for tumor development, maintenance and resistance to drugs. Previously we have shown that the CD133high/CD44high fraction of colon cancer cells is different from their bulk counterparts at the functional, morphological and genomic levels. In contrast to the majority of colon cancer cells expressing moderate levels of CD133, CD44 and CD166, cells with a high combined expression of CD133 and CD44 possessed several characteristic stem cell features, including profound self-renewal capacity in vivo and in vitro, and the ability to give rise to different cell phenotypes. The present study was undertaken for two aims: a) to determine stem cell-related genomic characteristics of floating 3D multicellular spheroids induced by CD133high/CD44high colon cancer cells; and b) to evaluate CSC-specific alterations induced by new-generation taxoid SB-T-1214. Results Selected CSC phenotype was isolated from three independent invasive colon cancer cell lines, HCT116, HT29 and DLD-1. A stem cell-specific PCR array assay (SABiosciences) revealed that colonospheres induced by purified CD133high/CD44high expressing cells display profound up-regulation of stem cell-related genes in comparison with their bulk counterparts. The FACS analysis has shown that the 3D colonospheres contained some minority cell populations with high levels of expression of Oct4, Sox2, Nanog and c-Myc, which are essential for stem cell pluripotency and self-renewal. Single administration of the SB-T-1214 at concentration 100 nM-1 μM for 48 hr not only induced growth inhibition and apoptotic cell death in these three types of colon cancer spheroids in 3D culture, but also mediated massive inhibition of the stem cell-related genes and significant down-regulation of the pluripotency gene expression. PCR array and FACS data were confirmed with western blotting. Importantly, viable cells that survived this treatment regimen were no longer able to induce secondary floating spheroids and exhibited significant morphological abnormalities. Conclusions We report here that a new-generation taxoid SB-T-1214 possesses significant activity against colon cancer spheroids induced by and enriched with drug resistant tumorigenic CD133high/CD44high cells and efficiently inhibited expression of the majority of stem cell-related genes. Our data indicates that the previously observed long-term efficacy of SB-T-1214 against drug resistant colon tumors in vivo may be explained by the down-regulation of multiple stem cell-related genes in the tumorigenic cell population, in addition to its known efficacy as a mitotic poison against proliferating cancer cells.