HER2 Support Group Forums

My genetics and biochemistry background are ancient history--undergraduate degree in biology with lots of biochemistry taken, 2/3 of a year of graduate work in medical genetics, all more than 30 years ago.

Have been reviewing the literature on the web on a voluntary basis as a way to help friends with cancer over the past 8 years--NKT cell lymphoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, cutaneous Tcell lymphoma, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, nonsmall cell lung cancer, triple negative breast cancer, etc. I even went with some of them to their doctors' appointments. Three years ago the "dress rehearsals" of doing so came in handy as I started researching my own family's cancers--squamous cell carcinoma of the parotid and islet cell tumor of the pancreas.

So all the articles I have read over the past 8 years about the different kinds of T cells and oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes has certainly been new to me, my previous education gave me a very dated general background for it but did not really prepare me for its complexity--but I didn't let that frighten me away from trying to read it.

I try to be careful in what I post so as not to give anyone the impression of being authoritative in any way (except about "ganglions"!). Whatever "knowledge" I had about the biology, physiology, immunology and chemistry of cancer is three decades old. But what I have gleened from my attempts to review the literature is the fact that it IS possible to look up the same articles that medical researchers and oncologists read if you are not afraid(and knowledge is liberating!)--and that is what I try to ENCOURAGE others to do.