Good news & announcements:

President-Elect, Garro Ellis, is headed to Hamburg for Rotary International convention next week.

Girish Patel, a big fan of India's Prime Minister, by the way, announced that one billion people turned out to vote and re-elect Narendra Modi.

Kristin Hagan gave a quick recap of the All Club Service Project. It was an overwhelming success, with good member turnout and some Boy Scouts helped too. They prepared 20,000 packaged meals destined for The Gleaners and The Mission.

President Ray announced that Havana Nights raised $37,00. So, that means no car wash fundraisers for this club!

Program

Today's guest, our very own Dr. Shawn Shambaugh, gave a presentation called "What's New in Oncology". Dr. Shambaugh has been Principal Investigator on a number of research trials and is published in leading peer journals. So, he knows what he's talking about. Unfortunately, I didn't... much anyway. Here are my takeaways.

Cancer is bad.

In 2019 there will be an estimated 1,762,450 new cancer cases and 606,880 deaths. The majority of those cases will be; breast, lung, prostate, and colon, in that order. Lung, colon, and pancreas cancer are the leaders in taking lives.

Chemotherapy and radiation will continue to be the main ways to treat cancer, along with surgery. However, there have been some new drug breakthroughs entering the market. Unfortunately, some of those drug treatments cost about $350,000 per treatment- so good luck talking your health insurance company into that.

The new hot way to treat some forms of cancer is by using the human body's own defense mechanisms. 

Cancer grows pretty much un-noticed in our bodies by coating its cells in a protein that fools our T-blood cells (white blood cells' big, bad brother) into thinking it's just a good, regular ol' human cell. T-cells basically cruise around with radar- detecting foreign cells and attacking them.

One breakthrough treatment, called CAR T-cell Therapy, calls for taking some blood from the patient, then they separate the T-cells. Then, and this is where it gets murky for me, they modify the T-cells (with magic?) and trick them out with more receptors. Finally, doctors infuse them back into the patient. The "super" T-cells are no longer fooled by the Cancer cells' cloaking device.

The following illustration really doesn't do a better job of explaining it, but I'm including it anyway.

Guests: