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Glioblastoma Introduction

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Glioblastoma is the most deadly form of brain cancer, accounting for over 15,000 deaths in 2015 alone, and is responsible for 52% of all primary brain tumors. There are 2.96 cases of glioblastoma for every 100,000 people. Glioblastoma is so fatal because it does not react to normal cancer treatments like radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and surgery the same way that other cancers do.
Glioblastoma is characterized in several different ways, such as primary or secondary and epileptic or nonepileptic. Primary glioblastoma, the most deadly type, affects the elderly and is characterized by EGFR amplification, an enzyme that attaches phosphate groups to tyrosine residues in proteins. On the other hand, secondary glioblastoma is normally abundant …show more content…

The most important aspects of the introduction are the clarity and cohesiveness, and the providing the right background information. In the first article, the introduction was very long yet thorough, and carefully analysed cancer stem cells, glioblastoma, and molecular pathways such as CD133+/-, MTOR, PI3K, akt, etc. In addition, it examines both the biological makeup and of these and what known and theorized effects they have on both the body and on glioblastoma multiforme tumors. The organization of the introduction was slightly hard to follow, especially since a lot of new terms were being introduced all at once. The second article carefully examines the known differences between epileptic tumors and regular glioblastoma tumors. It also examines which of these differences have been previously hypothesized to help the prognosis of patients. The presence of these other theses helps the reader completely understand how this experiment was derived. On the other hand, It only gives a little bit of history on the normal glioblastoma. The third introduction gives a clear summary of glioblastoma, and the formation of the anti-tumor vaccine. The article discusses not only what is happening, but why it acts that way, making this the best introduction. This is really …show more content…

In the first article, methods were very short and concise consisting of only three sentences. After researching the terms in much more depth, I realized that these were common scientific practices that any researcher would have been able to understand based on the information given in the introduction and in the methods. These methods include IFC, western boy analyses and neurosphere assay. The methods could have been longer which would have helped the reader’s comprehension. The methods of the second article have two parts. The first part is the cellular analyses and the second part is a statistical analyses of the survival of the patients. The two of these were compared to determine what cellular characteristics influence the favorable prognosis. In addition, they were able to determine whether or not seizure medicines actually improve the prognosis as well as what about epileptic tumors led to a more favorable prognosis. There are strong methods because they examine multiple parts of the epileptic seizures and are able to come to many different conclusions as a result. The third methods were extremely detailed and easy to follow.They accurately detail how the vaccine works and how it was created. I think it was really interesting that the article included how a patient would have to qualify to be part of the study. “Eligibility criteria included a Karnofsky performance score of 60 or greater and

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