Immunotherapy delays recurrence for stage III and IV ovarian cancers

“This is cutting edge medicine for ovarian cancer,” said Jonathan Oh, MD, a gynecologic oncologist at Texas Oncology, P.A., in Dallas. Dr. Oh presented the results of a preliminary study on the vaccine at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer on March 28 in Chicago…

Natural extract shows promise for preventing breast cancer, study suggests

“Doctors, patients and researchers are looking for alternative treatments for triple negative breast cancer, and people are always looking for ways to prevent cancer,” said Patrick Martin, Ph.D., associate professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and leader of the study. “How awesome would it be to be able to say: Here, take a daily vitamin tablet from the rose plant to possibly help prevent or treat cancer? It’s a natural product that we found to be effective, with no known side effects.” Triple negative breast cancer draws its name from the fact that the cancer cells in these tumors lack the three growth factor receptors that are normally targeted during breast cancer treatment. …

New therapeutic target may improve treatment for brain cancer

The research will be presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Annual Meeting during Experimental Biology 2015. Monteagudo’s research indicates a new possible chemotherapeutic target for treating GBM: transglutaminase 2 (TG2), a multifunctional protein that can regulate cell adhesion and motility. Given these documented functions of TG2, Monteagudo and her colleagues in the laboratory of Gail Johnson, Ph.D., at the University of Rochester, were interested in determining if TG2 played an important role in GBM cell growth. …

Sweeping prostate cancer review upends widely held view on radiation

“The common teaching has been, without clear evidence, that urinary incontinence and erectile function are worse when radiation is delivered earlier rather than later, but we didn’t see any protective effect of delayed radiation compared to earlier radiation,” said radiation oncologist Timothy N. Showalter, MD, of the UVA Cancer Center. “It contradicts the clinical principle… Read More »

Exercise linked to improved erectile, sexual function in men

While past studies have highlighted the relationship between better erectile function and exercise, African-American men have been underrepresented in this literature. “This study is the first to link the benefits of exercise in relation to improved erectile and sexual function in a racially diverse group of patients,” said Adriana Vidal, PhD, senior author of the… Read More »

Stress granules ease the way for cancer metastasis

When cells are under duress, they curtail almost all protein synthesis and stash their mRNAs in stress granules. These structures help healthy cells, but they also allow tumor cells to survive harsh conditions. A protein named YB-1, which is overexpressed in many types of tumors, accumulates in stress granules, but researchers don’t know how YB-1… Read More »