1. Title: Discussion on seminar/journal club discussion
Jessian Muñoz was our speaker at our first seminar. He was a fellow student of UPR
of Cayey and now a current student of New Jersey Medical School in New Jersey
pursuing his MD-PhD degree. The topic of his talked was about his recent study
entitled “Brain tumors + MiRna = Stem cells”. Just from hearing the title I was eager
to learn more about how these concepts were related and might encourage others to
conduct further studies on topic. During his presentation, Mr. Muñoz explained in
detail his experience and how he conducted the experiment. He also explained the
scientific terms that could have been confusing. I found interesting the term MiRna,
that is a class of post-transcriptional regulators in our system that display various
functions in our body like in the physiology, in cell differentiation, proliferation,
apoptosis to endocrine system, and also targets by translational inhibition and mRna
destabilization.
After the seminar he shared with us about an article entitled, “Glioblastoma
multiforme: a perspective on recent findings in human cancer and mouse models.”
Brain Tumors is a type of cancer that in the near future will affect a lot of people.
There are different types of tumors that are classified based on their stage of severity.
The researchers said that the brain tumor at its forth stage takes form of a butterfly, in
other words, it covers almost your whole brain due to its severity. Because of the
relation between stem cells and cancer cells there may be new ways on conducting
treatments. The relationship that the stem cell has with the cancer cell is the ability to
give rise to all cell types found in a particular cancer sample. On the other hand, the
stem cell is found within the cancer cell. In conclusion, passion is what is going to
enlighten my path. This experience awoke in me the desire to continue searching and

2. studying more in the field of cancer with the hope to become in the future a medical
researcher and doctor. These findings on the stem cells in the brain tumor are relevant
outcomes that had inspired me to specialize in the area of brain cancer.