[SciMania]

This course is taught by Dr. Andre Bedard and Dr. Peter Whyte - both teach ~18 lectures each. Personally, I found Dr. Bedard to be much better, he explained things well and was engaging. Dr. Whyte tended to read off the slides and attendance dropped dramatically when he came in to teach.

The course provides an overview of the molecular basis of cancer and cancer development. It covers topics such as:

-Oncogenes/Protoncogenes
-RTK, PI3K, MAPK, WNT, TGF-beta signalling
-Transcriptional regulation
-Epithelial to mesenchymal transition, microRNAs, Tumor initiating cells
-Cell cycle & regulation
-Retinoblastoma, other tumor suppressors
-DNA tumor viruses
-Targeted therapies

The course is EXTREMELY content heavy, and by and large is a memorization course. You need to understand concepts, but midterms test primarily memorization ability. The exam was a bit more conceptual based.

Outline:
-2 Midterms 20% each
-Assignments (5) 3% each
-Final exam 45%

I found the content very interesting, and highly relevant. You will learn a lot about many many many different processes that lead to tumor formation. Personally, I would have liked to learn more about treatments and types of cancers but as a molecular biology course this cannot really be expected. They did, however, spend ~3-4 lectures going over things like this which was nice.

Tutorials are a bit useless, they are designed only to go over the assignment answers. Assignments were very useful - answers were generally in the lecture notes, with the exception being 1-2 questions that required critical thinking.

Assignments consist only of questions taken from previous midterms/exams - in this way they are highly useful to give you an idea of what to expect on the midterm/exam. However they require a great amount of detail and marks are taken off for every little mistake...(midterms are not like this).

There is no room for flexibility in this course - no assignments are dropped and both midterms will count, so it's important to do really well throughout.

If you didn't like Bio 2B03 or Bio 3H03/3HH3 then do not take this course, as it is largely just a more in depth version of these courses.

Overall though, I would highly recommend this course if you can handle learning the details of signaling pathways and if you are interested in doing research pertaining to cancer.

[neelyej]

how was the exam?

[AlicatM]

I was wondering if someone would share their experience of this course from this past year? Is the workload manageable? Interesting?

[R633]

The course is very interesting. You learn about various different cellular pathways relevant to cancer biology. You also learn new topics in current research areas. That being said, the workload is relatively heavy, but completely manageable. There are problem sets due every 2 weeks and the questions are straight forward, but some require critical thinking. The two midterms are very fair, but if you do not prepare well, you will get a low grade. The average for the 2nd midterm was 56%. However, they changed the marking scheme around so that if you did better on your exam, then they wouldn't count the second midterm. The exam is difficult, but again it is fair. The average was a high 60 to low 70. Be sure to know all pathways inside out and you will do very well in the course. Those that do not do well are those that underestimate the midterms and exam. Good luck, work hard and do well!

[Sushiman]

I am going into third year. Is this course too much for a third year student? Thanks

[R633]

Originally Posted by Sushiman

I am going into third year. Is this course too much for a third year student? Thanks

If you did well in the prerequisite courses for this course, you should should manage just fine regardless if you are in third, or fourth year.

[Deborah]

This was SUCH an interesting course! Definitely would rank it as one of my all time favourites of undergrad. The course is very different from most Bio/Mol Bio/Science courses I've taken because it shows you the progression of the cancer biology field from initial critical discoveries up to recent ground-breaking discoveries. In doing this, you can really understand why molecules like Ras and Src are so important. The course also showed me why cancer is such a diverse and difficult disease to conquer. Although challenging (especially studying everything for the exam given the multiple signaling pathways, molecules etc.), integrating all the material gives you an idea of how interconnected all the elements of the course touch on. I took this course Winter 2013 and its organization and grading scheme is essentially unchanged from the initial course review post above. Highly recommended to anyone interested in learning more about cancer! Also a great course for anyone considering grad school in the cancer field.

[marcie]

Any tips on studying for the final exam?

In particular, are there any topics from the first 2/3 of the course (i.e. material on midterms I and II) that we should focus on? This is a cumulative exam so obviously my goal is to study as much as possible... but with the overwhelming amount of material, the insanely high level of detail that must be committed to memory, and a limited amount of time to study... I'm going to have to pick my battles wisely. Advice much appreciated.

[justlily]

Does anyone have any past midterms or tests for this course?