Nerd Nite No. 74: A collaboration with YPACS
Join Nerd Nite and the Philadelphia Young Professionals of the American Cancer Society for our 74th Nerd Nite. In between speakers we will have the return of the dry t-shirt contest! Come in your nerdiest shirt, wear it with pride, you might win a prize!
Alexandra Psihogios will present “A High Cost for Low Adherence: Barriers to Adolescent/Young Adult Adherence to Cancer Treatments”
When it comes to following medical recommendations, such as taking medications, changing our diets, or following a new exercise routine, most of us do not do exactly what the doctor orders. For adolescents and young adults with cancer (AYA), medical nonadherence is a pervasive but under-researched problem that is associated with devastating consequences. Cancer and its intensive treatments interrupt aspects of normative AYA development and family functioning, such as increased dependence on parents at a time when independence should be increasing. In this talk, I will discuss developmental and family functioning barriers to medical adherence, and how interventions that address these barriers may help to improve cancer outcomes for this vulnerable population.
Alexandra Psihogios, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow in Behavioral Oncology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she conducts research and provides psychological consultation and intervention to patients with cancer and their families. Under the mentorship of Drs. Lamia Barakat and Lisa Schwartz, and with support from the American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dr. Psihogios is completing her research on AYA canceradherence. She obtained her B.A. in psychology from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Loyola University Chicago.
David Issadore will talk about “Monitoring Cancer Progression, Metastasis, and Drug Efficacy via Exosomes”
The transformative growth in microelectronics in the latter half of the 20th century was fueled fundamentally by the ability to simultaneously miniaturize and integrate complex circuits onto monolithic chips. The impact of this growth has been profound– computing is pervasive and portable, communication is instant and global, and information is ubiquitously gathered and shared. My research aims to harness these same electrical engineering approaches, which have enabled the microelectronic revolution, to solve high impact problems in medical diagnostics. To accomplish this goal my lab develops hybrid microchips, where microfluidics (i.e. micrometer sized plumbing) are built directly on top of semiconductor chips.
David Issadore is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the integration of microelectronics, microfluidics, nanomaterials and molecular targeting, and their application to medicine. This multidisciplinary approach enables Issadore’s lab to explore new technologies to bring medical diagnostics from expensive, centralized facilities, directly to clinical and resource-limited settings for applications including early detection of pancreatic cancer, Tuberculosis diagnosis in patients co-infected with HIV, and prognosis of traumatic brain injury.
Sara Meyer will give us the scoop on Acute Myeloid Leukemia
What is Acute Myeloid Leukemia and why do I study it? How did I even end up doing biomedical research to begin with? I’ll be describing why leukemia is such a challenging disease to treat by puzzling Doctors and Scientists for decades, what are some of the most significant research advancements and medical breakthroughs in leukemia, and go over what my research lab in the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson is doing to better understand and treat this disease.
Sara Meyer is an Assistant Professor at Thomas Jefferson University in the Department of Cancer Biology. She earned her PhD at the University of Cincinnati (2009) and completed her postdoc fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital (2016). Her primary research focus is acute myeloid leukemia (AML), where she uses the latest cutting-edge approaches and technologies for developing new model systems and studying the mechanisms of disease development, progression, and responsiveness to therapeutics. Dr. Meyer’s goal is to better understand and leverage the epigenetics and non-coding RNA biology of AML to inform new ways to treat the disease.
The details:
Doors open at 4pm. Show at 7:30pm. We recommend you get there early to ensure getting a good seat!
$5
Wednesday, May 3rd
Frankford Hall
1210 Frankford Avenue
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