Tag Archives: world

Precision medicine for adrenal cancer, study suggests

In a randomized phase 3 trial, adrenal cancer patients receiving the investigational drug linsitinib fared no better than patients receiving a placebo. But the researchers noticed a small subset of patients who had significant response and remained on the drug for an extended time. “While it was only a small subset of patients who responded to linsitinib, this remains very promising in the era of precision medicine,” says co-principle investigator Gary D. …

Early recall rates decline after second round of lung cancer screening

In the United States the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) showed that annual lung cancer screening of high-risk individuals with LDCT reduces lung cancer mortality by 20% and overall mortality by 7%. There are now multiple lung cancer screening trials ongoing throughout the world, but one concern is the high number of early repeat scans for suspicious findings that are in fact not lung cancer. …

Swine flu outbreak in India raises concern: New strain of H1N1 may carry dangerous mutations

The findings, which appear in the March 11 issue of Cell Host & Microbe, contradict previous reports from Indian health officials that the strain has not changed from the version of H1N1 that emerged in 2009 and has been circulating around the world ever since. With very little scientific data available about the new strain, the MIT researchers stress the need for better surveillance to track the outbreak and to help scientists to determine how to respond to this influenza variant. …

Study details microRNA’s role as double agent during Hep C infection

Led jointly by Charles Rice, the Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professor in Virology and head of the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease and Robert Darnell, Senior Attending Physician, Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor, and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neuro-oncology, the research is described in Cell. …

Global health experts call into question sub-Saharan cancer data

Cancer data compiled by the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) GLOBOCAN project has huge global influence and is used by Governments and international NGOs to determine health and funding priorities in sub-Saharan Africa. However, no independent evaluation of the data has ever been undertaken. For the first time, experts from Queen Mary University of London have critically evaluated all publically available information on the quality of cancer registration systems in sub-Saharan Africa. …

New tool provides maps of protein interactions for 2,800 diseases

Scientists working in the Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology Lab have included the more than 23,000 documented genetic mutations that affect the function of 2,000 proteins in an open-access web tool, and have positioned them on the map of known interactions between human proteins. dSysMap can be accessed free of charge at http://dsysmap.irbbarcelona.org, and scientists from around the world can add their data in an anonymous manner. Developed entirely at IRB Barcelona, dSysMap (“Disease-mutations Systemic Mapping”) provides molecular details about how mutations in certain proteins alter interactions with other proteins, thus affecting the correct funcion of cellular processes. The tool has explained, for example, why mutations in a single protein can cause two distinct diseases or why mutations in different proteins can trigger the same condition. …

Potential new breathalyzer for lung cancer screening

Their work, described in a paper published this week in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, from AIP Publishing, demonstrates the potential of the device to be used as a breathalyzer for early lung cancer detection — possibly a safe and effective method of detecting cancer early that may save lives. According to the researchers, the laboratory results are promising, but the device would still need to prove effective in clinical trials before its widespread adoption as a diagnostic tool. “Our results show that the device can discriminate different kinds and concentrations of cancer related volatile organic compounds with a nearly100 percent accurate rate,” said Jin-can Lei, the primary researcher and a postdoc from the College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Chongqing University. “This would also be a rapid method in that the entire detection process in our experiment only takes about 20 minutes.” Based on a small, circular plate called fluorescent cross-responsive sensor array, a specially-designed rotary gas chamber and a data collection and processing system, the device can detect lung cancer related gases at very low concentration, or below 50 parts per billion (ppb), showing a potential to identify lung cancer at the early stage. …

Potential new tool for cervical cancer detection, diagnosis

As rosy a picture as that paints, cervical cancer continues to claim far too many lives. Thousands of American women still die from the disease every year, and hundreds of thousands of other women around the world suffer the same fate — sad, stark statistics that showcase the continued need for more advanced screening methods to catch more cases of the disease early, when it is most treatable. Now a team of researchers from Central South University in China have demonstrated that a technique known as photoacoustic imaging, which is already under investigation for detecting skin or breast cancers and for monitoring therapy, also has the potential to be a new, faster, cheaper and non-invasive method to detect, diagnose and stage cervical cancer with high accuracy. …

No link found between bladder cancer, use of pioglitazone or rosiglitazone, Avandia — ScienceDaily

Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer in the world, with 430,000 new cases diagnosed in 2012. Europe and North America have the highest incidence of bladder cancer, with an even higher incidence in people with diabetes. Bladder tumours overexpress a natural part of the cell machinery, a transcription factor in the cell nucleus known as ‘peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma’ (or PPARγ) that is found in the urothelium (the lining of the urinary tract). Both pioglitazone and rosiglitazone are part of the thiazolidinediones (TZDs) class of drugs, which act as PPARγ agonists, meaning they induce the same action as PPARγ…