Category Archives: Cancer Knowledge

Cellular biology of colorectal cancer: New Insight

Lead author Kristi Neufeld, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences and co-leader of the Cancer Biology program at the KU Cancer Center, has spent the better part of her career trying to understand the various activities of APC, a protein whose functional loss is thought to initiate roughly 80 percent of all colon polyps, a precursor to colon cancer. Neufeld, along with her postdoctoral fellow Maged Zeineldin, undergraduate student Mathew Miller and veterinary pathologist Ruth Sullivan, now reports that APC found in a particular subcellular compartment, the nucleus, protects from inflammation as well as tumor development associated with chronic colitis. Whether APC reaches the nucleus may well affect the ability of intestinal stem cells to produce differentiated cells with specialized functions, Neufeld said. …

Rates of heart disease, stroke continue to decline in Europe

The research, which provides an update for 2014 on the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Europe, shows that death rates from CVD (diseases of the heart and blood vessels) vary enormously. For some eastern European countries, including Russia and Ukraine, the death rate from coronary heart disease for 55-60 year olds is greater than the equivalent rate in France for people 20 years older. The age adjusted CVD death rates for men and women of all ages were six-fold higher in Russia than in France. In 2010 in Russia 915 men and 517 women died per 100,000 of the population, whereas the equivalent rates in France were 150 and 87 per 100,000 respectively. …

Natural killer cells battle pediatric leukemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer of childhood. This disease hinders the development of healthy blood cells while cancer cells proliferate. Currently, children with ALL receive chemotherapy for two to three years, exposing them to significant side effects including changes in normal development and future fertility. As a way to avoid these adverse effects, investigators have been researching how to supercharge the body’s innate cancer-fighting ability — a technique called immunotherapy…

Natural (born) killer cells battle pediatric leukemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer of childhood. This disease hinders the development of healthy blood cells while cancer cells proliferate. Currently, children with ALL receive chemotherapy for two to three years, exposing them to significant side effects including changes in normal development and future fertility. …

Crucial step in DNA repair identified by researchers

Such disorders are caused by faulty DNA repair systems that increase the risk for cancer and other conditions. The findings are published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Regents Professor Michael Smerdon and post-doctoral researcher Peng Mao found that when DNA is damaged, a specific protein must first be “unbuckled” to allow easy access for the DNA “repair crew.” Without this unbuckling, entry to the damaged site is hampered by the compact arrangement of genes and protein in chromosomes called chromatin. …

Device monitors key step in development of tumor metastases

“This device gives us a platform to be used in testing and comparing compounds to block or delay the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, potentially slowing the progression of cancer,” says Daniel Irimia, MD, PhD, associate director of the BioMEMS Resource Center in the MGH Department of Surgery. Normally a stage in embryonic development, EMT is important during normal wound healing and also appears to take place when epithelial cells lining bodily surfaces and cavities become malignant. Instead of adhering to each other tightly in layers, cells that have undergone EMT gain the ability to separate out, move to other parts of the body and implant themselves into the new sites. Cells that have transitioned into a mesenchymal state appear to be more resistant to cancer therapies or other measures designed to induce cell death. …

Microchip reveals how tumor cells transition to invasion

Using a microengineered device that acts as an obstacle course for cells, researchers have shed new light on a cellular metamorphosis thought to play a role in tumor cell invasion throughout the body. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a process in which epithelial cells, which tend to stick together within a tissue, change into mesenchymal cells, which can disperse and migrate individually. EMT is a beneficial process in developing embryos, allowing cells to travel throughout the embryo and establish specialized tissues. But recently it has been suggested that EMT might also play a role in cancer metastasis, allowing cancer cells to escape from tumor masses and colonize distant organs…