Know Your Enemy, Know Yourself - Cancer Case Study

Introduction

Learning Objectives

After completing this case study, you should be able to:
• Read and interpret breast cancer pathology results.
• Draw the phases of mitosis.
• Connect cell signaling to cell cycle regulation, and explain how dysregulation of those events can lead to cancer.
• Discuss how physicians use precision medicine to obtain genetic information about the individual’s tumor tissue
to target treatment specific to that individual’s cancer.
• Discuss how physicians use precision medicine to obtain genetic information about the individual’s somatic,
non-cancerous cells to make decisions about treatment.
• Define incidence and mortality.
• Compare how health disparities impact patients’ and physicians’ abilities to know the enemy and know
themselves in the United States and the world.
• Discuss the impact of ethnicity, age, geographic location and healthcare infrastructure on health disparities.

Before you begin the case study, you should be able to: 

•  Describe the cell cycle and what happens at each phase: G0, G1, S, G2, M, and cytokinesis.
• Describe the three cell cycle checkpoints, what is being detected at each checkpoint, and what happens to the cell if it does not meet the requirements of the checkpoint.
• List the phases of mitosis in the order in which they occur and describe what happens in each phase.

If you need to refresh your understanding of the cell cycle and mitosis, or need to understand more about cell cycle checkpoints and cancer, watch these videos first:

Cell Cycle (mitosis)

Phases of Mitosis

Cell Cycle Checkpoints

Case copyright held by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Originally published October 15, 2018. Please see our usage guidelines, which outline our policy concerning permissible reproduction of this
work. Photo © Richard FIsher, cc by 2.0, <https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardfisher/3415115671>.