Category Archives: Cancer Treatment

Physicists decode decision circuit of cancer metastasis

The study appears online this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Cancer cells behave in complex ways, and this work shows how such complexity can arise from the operation of a relatively simple decision-making circuit," said study co-author Eshel Ben-Jacob, a senior investigator at Rice’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) and adjunct professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice. "By stripping away the complexity and starting with first principles, we get a glimpse of the ‘logic of cancer’ — the driver of the disease’s decision to spread." In the PNAS study, Ben-Jacob and CTBP colleagues José Onuchic, Herbert Levine, Mingyang Lu and Mohit Kumar Jolly describe a new theoretical framework that allowed them to model the behavior of microRNAs in decision-making circuits…

Diabetes drug with chemo, radiation may improve outcomes for lung cancer

The preclinical and clinical results, which have set the stage for a first-of-its-kind prospective study, point to metformin as an effective radiosensitizer — adrug that makes tumor cells more sensitive to radiation therapy — to treat stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Because of poor local response and five-year survival rates around 15 percent in late-stage NSCLC patients, well-tolerated, combination therapies are greatly needed. The abstract is being presented by Ildiko Csiki, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center. Metformin, the most-widely used drug for type-2 diabetes, has been shown to have anti-cancer effects on a number of cancers, including prostate and colon…

Stealth nanoparticles lower drug-resistant tumors’ defenses

Paula T. Hammond and colleagues at the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research at MIT note that triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive disease that is difficult to treat with standard-of-care therapy, and patients’ prognoses are poor. These cancer cells evade treatment by ramping up the production of certain proteins that protect tumors from chemotherapy drugs…

Value, limitations of patient assistance programs for women with breast cancer

Most breast cancer patients who had information about patient assistance programs used them to learn more about adjuvant therapy, obtain psychosocial support, and overcome practical/financial obstacles to getting treatment, reported researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Researchers found that, in most cases, patients who were referred to assistance programs did contact organizations running programs, such as Cancer Care Inc., SHARE, and the Mount Sinai Breast Health Resources Program. …

New eye treatment effective in laboratory tests

The studies involved controlling the actions of microRNAs, tiny pieces of RNA that were once considered to be "junk" but are now known to fine-tune gene activation and expression. The researchers showed that treating mice with short RNA strands that precisely target and inhibit microRNAs ("antimicroRNAs") can stop the aberrant growth of blood vessels ("neovascularization"). It is this abnormal proliferation of vessels that exacerbates vision loss in neovascular eye diseases like "wet" macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, two of the leading causes of blindness. Described in the cover story of the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the microRNA treatments blocked aberrant vessel growth without damaging existing vasculature or neurons in three separate models of neovascular eye disease — a proof-of-principle that suggests future treatment based on the same approach may be effective in humans…

New program makes prostate cancer treatment decisions easier

A recent clinical study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that mortality rates for early stage prostate cancer were the same for men who choose active surveillance such as periodic PSA testing and biopsy, versus those who chose to treat their disease immediately with radiation or surgery. The research suggested that in cases of low-risk prostate cancer, aggressive treatment may not offer a long term survival benefit, and yet is associated with a number of side effects such as urinary incontinence and sexual problems. However, the vast majority of men diagnosed with low-risk cancer undergo aggressive treatment rather than active surveillance…

Genome of aggressive lymphoma sequenced

The authors analyzed the genome of tumor cells at the onset of the disease and within several years after treatment, when the relapses occur. Thus, it has been possible to evaluate the genomic modifications associated with disease progression. These analyses have discovered the implication of several genes in the progression of these lymphomas and some mechanisms generating resistance to chemotherapy. …