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ABC News
6 days ago
- General
- ABC News
This couple say their strict meal-prep routine saves time, money and energy
Does three hours of cooking every Sunday sound like an unbearable chore? Linh Dao and David Tran say it helps their whole week run smoothly and weeknights less frantic. The couple, who live in Naarm/Melbourne and share meal prep tips online, say it took time to develop a system they enjoy. The couple's meal prep starts on Thursday, when they choose four meals (with four portions per meal) to prep. This covers four days of lunches and dinners for the following week. David says this gives them enough flexibility to go out for dinner or cook something specific if they want to. Linh says if it's an unusually busy week, they might only cook one or two meals on Sunday or rely on their freezer supply. Shopping happens on Sunday morning before the couple spend three hours (or less) doing the bulk of the week's cooking together. Not everything is cooked in advance. The couple prep fresh greens by washing and chopping them, so they are ready to add to a soup or sauté as a side just before they're eaten. Variety is important to the couple, so a week of meal prep might include Vietnamese lemon chicken, garlic soy lamb chops, Mongolian beef stir-fry, and a carrot, daikon and chicken soup. Or char siu pork, rosemary lamb chops, soy sauce braised chicken wings and a chicken soup. Linh and David mostly work from home (Linh in social work and David in sales) and they've come a long way from their first meal-prep marathon, which took seven hours. "It took us quite a lot of trial and error," says Linh. The couple persisted because they wanted to cut down on the time they were spending planning, shopping for and cooking their meals. "We wanted to eat good food but figure out how to save time," David says. They became faster by playing to their strengths. "Linh loves to cook more stews and soups ... whereas I like to barbecue." Without their meal-prep sessions, Linh estimates it would take about two hours to cook dinner and clean up after work. This way, they've often eaten and washed up by six in the evening. It gives them more time to spend together and time for Linh to call her family in Vietnam in the evenings. She says they also eat more healthily by planning ahead. For example, "portion control is very easy when you've already mapped out how much you're eating for the week". David says they save money by eating out less and it means they can spend a bit more when they want to. Clare Collins, a Laureate Professor in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Newcastle, says research shows people who cook and eat at home are more likely to be meeting their nutritional needs. While her routine is less structured, she tends to cook two meals on Sunday that set her on the right path for the week. If you want to be more organised when it comes to food, she says a good place to start is working out how much you spend. She recommends an "amnesty week", when the household adds up all their food and grocery expenses. Often savings can be made on expenses such as food delivery services, which could be spent on some more interesting ingredients during the grocery shop, she says. If a three-hour prep session doesn't sound realistic, Professor Collins says there are small changes that can help make preparing and eating home-cooked meals easier. She's part of the team behind healthy eating website No Money No Time, which she says you can use to filter recipes by ingredients, cooking appliances and cost. Professor Collins recommends organising your lunch for the next day as part of your dinner routine. "If you leave making lunch sandwiches to the morning, you won't do it half the time." She says putting some — individually portioned — meals in the freezer can save you from buying lunch or dinner during a busy week. Bulking out recipes with a tin of legumes (such as lentils, kidney beans, black beans or chickpeas) can help you prepare extra, she says. Keeping a bag of frozen veggies in the freezer means you will always have some healthy cooking staples to work with. Source: Better Health Channel
Los Angeles Times
18-06-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
USC Explores Electric Fields Approach to Attack Deadliest Form of Brain Cancer
A new study led by Keck Medicine of USC researchers may have uncovered an effective combination therapy for glioblastoma, a brain tumor diagnosis with few available effective treatments. According to the National Brain Tumor Society, the average survival for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma is eight months. The study finds that using Tumor Treating Fields therapy (TTFields), which delivers targeted waves of electric fields directly into tumors to stop their growth and signal the body's immune system to attack cancerous tumor cells, may extend survival among patients with glioblastoma when combined with immunotherapy (pembrolizumab) and chemotherapy (temozolomide). TTFields disrupt tumor growth using low-intensity, alternating electric fields that push and pull key structures inside tumor cells in continually shifting directions, making it difficult for the cells to multiply. Preventing tumor growth gives patients a better chance of successfully fighting the cancer. When used to treat glioblastoma, TTFields are delivered through a set of mesh electrodes that are strategically positioned on the scalp, generating fields at a precise frequency and intensity focused on the tumor. Patients wear the electrodes for approximately 18 hours a day. Researchers observed that TTFields attract more tumor-fighting T cells, which are white blood cells that identify and attack cancer cells, into and around the glioblastoma. When followed by immunotherapy, these T cells stay active longer and are replaced by even stronger, more effective tumor-fighting T cells. 'By using TTFields with immunotherapy, we prime the body to mount an attack on the cancer, which enables the immunotherapy to have a meaningful effect in ways that it could not before,' said David Tran, MD, PhD, chief of neuro-oncology with Keck Medicine, co-director of the USC Brain Tumor Center and corresponding author of the study. 'Our findings suggest that TTFields may be the key to unlocking the value of immunotherapy in treating glioblastoma.' TTFields are often combined with chemotherapy in cancer treatment. However, even with aggressive treatment, the prognosis for glioblastoma remains poor. Immunotherapy, while successful in many other cancer types, has also not proved effective for glioblastoma when used on its own. However, in this study, adding immunotherapy to TTFields and chemotherapy was associated with a 70% increase in overall survival. Notably, patients with larger, unresected (not surgically removed) tumors showed an even stronger immune response to TTFields and lived even longer. This suggests that when it comes to kick-starting the body's immune response against the cancer, having a larger tumor may provide more targets for the therapy to work against. This study demonstrates that combining TTFields with immunotherapy triggers a potent immune response within the tumor – one that ICIs can then amplify to bolster the body's own defense against cancer. 'Think of it like a team sport – immunotherapy sends players in to attack the tumor (the offense), while TTFields weaken the tumor's ability to fight back (the defense). And just like in team sports, the best defense is a good offense,' said Tran, who is also a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Keck Medicine is participating in the multicenter Phase 3 clinical trial to validate the efficacy of TTFields with immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Tran, who has been researching TTFields for more than a decade, serves as the chair of the steering committee for this trial. Frances Chow, MD, neuro-oncologist with USC Norris, is the principal investigator of the Keck Medicine study site. This Phase 3 trial, currently open at 28 sites across the United States, Europe and Israel, aims to enroll over 740 patients through April 2029, including those with gross total resection, partial resection or biopsy-only tumors to assess the extent of how surgically removing tumors influences immune response. Information was sourced from Keck Medicine. To learn more, contact
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
USC receives grant for gene therapy targeting glioblastoma
The University of Southern California (USC) has received a $6m grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to advance a new gene therapy for glioblastoma. The treatment is the first gene therapy for this aggressive brain cancer to use a precision delivery system designed to minimise harm to non-cancerous cells. USC, in collaboration with the University of Florida's Zolotukhin Lab, has been awarded the three-year grant to progress the treatment through clinical trials. USC neurological surgery and neurology associate professor and USC Keck School of Medicine neuro-oncology division chief David Tran, along with his team, have identified "master regulators" within glioblastoma leveraging AI technology. These key genes, mostly dormant since early foetal development, are essential for the tumour's survival. The team's discovery of nine master genes, seven of which are developmental, opens up new targets for the therapy. David is also the co-director of the USC Brain Tumor Center. He stated: 'The personalised treatment you hear about for this type of cancer often feels like a game of whack-a-mole. By the time you've sequenced a patient's tumour, identified all its mutations, personalised a treatment plan, and developed the therapy, the tumour you're treating is no longer the same. There's a new set of mutations. So, you wind up chasing your tail.' The team has also identified a delivery mechanism for the therapy using a common adeno-associated virus (AAV), developed a library of ten billion AAV variants and screened them for the ability to infect glioblastoma cells without affecting healthy brain tissue. The team identified one candidate, known as T6, which demonstrates a high preference for infecting cancer cells in mice. The funding will facilitate the preparation of the delivery vehicle and drug target for clinical trials. It will also aid in refining conduction-enhanced delivery, a surgical procedure for administering gene therapy. USC investigators are developing a computational method to map tumour flow patterns, improving catheter placement and drug diffusion. Collaborating with the USC/Children's Hospital Los Angeles' cGMP facility, the grant team will ensure that all treatment products and protocols adhere to the Food and Drug Administration's cGMP [current good manufacturing practice] standards for human efficacy and safety. Further preclinical testing is planned to validate the laboratory model outcomes. "USC receives grant for gene therapy targeting glioblastoma" was originally created and published by Pharmaceutical Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Sign in to access your portfolio
