Remarkable progress has been made over the years, but unfortunately not all of the answers have been found. Olga Bajenova, a research associate professor in the BU School of Medicine's surgical biology laboratory, looks at cell samples on the screen of the lab's new Bio Rad Gel Documentation System. The number of new cancer cases in the U.S. declined on average 0.8 percent per year between 1990 and 1997. The new imaging system at the Laboratory of Surgical Biology, known as the Bio Rad Gel Documentation System, photographs these tissue samples and preserves the images on computer disks, eliminating the need to repeat film exposures or to rerun experiments. Before we had this new system, the images were much more difficult to document.
Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the United States.
If the primary tumor is dissected from the colon, there's a high rate of survival - about 90 percent. However, if the tumor has invaded the wall of the colon and lymph nodes, then the chances of survival are greatly reduced. Thomas says that about half of the patients operated on for primary tumors in the colon experience a recurrence of the cancer, mostly in the liver. Chemotherapy won't kill the tumor, and radiation therapy is ineffective. Eventually the patient dies of liver failure.