Category Archives: Cancer Treatment

Unexpected discovery of the ways cells move could boost understanding of complex diseases

The study appears June 23, 2013 in an advance online edition of Nature Materials. "We were trying to understand the basic relationship between collective cellular motions and collective cellular forces, as might occur during cancer cell invasion, for example. But in doing so we stumbled onto a phenomenon that was totally unexpected," said senior author Jeffrey Fredberg, professor of bioengineering and physiology in the HSPH Department of Environmental Health and co-senior investigator of HSPH’s Molecular and Integrative Cellular Dynamics lab. Biologists, engineers, and physicists from HSPH and IBEC worked together to shed light on collective cellular motion because it plays a key role in functions such as wound healing, organ development, and tumor growth. …

Changes in cell shape may lead to metastasis, not the other way around

Using automated high content screening and sophisticated computational modeling, the researchers’ screening and analysis of tens of millions of genetically manipulated cells helped them identify more than a dozen genes that influence cell shape. Their work could lead to a better understanding of how cells become metastatic and, eventually, pinpoint new gene therapy targets for cancer treatment. "We found that by altering the way the cells are grown to better mimic conditions in a living organism, gene expression could have a profound impact on cell shape," said Zheng Yin, the paper’s lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Systems Medicine and Bioengineering of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI). …

Chlamydia promotes gene mutations

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin (MPIIB) now show that Chlamydia infections can cause mutations in the host DNA by overriding the normal mechanisms by which their host prevents unregulated growth of genetically damaged cells that pave the way for the development of cancer. Owing to their intracellular lifestyle Chlamydia depend on various host cell functions for their survival. Chlamydia manipulates the host cell mechanism to favour its growth, however the consequences of such alterations on the fate of host cells remains enigmatic…

Men who can’t produce sperm face increased cancer risk

"An azoospermic man’s risk for developing cancer is similar to that for a typical man 10 years older," said Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD, assistant professor of urology at the medical school and director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Eisenberg is lead author of the study, published online June 20 in Fertility and Sterility. …

Chemical that makes naked mole rats cancer-proof discovered

The findings could eventually lead to new cancer treatments in people, said study authors Andrei Seluanov and Vera Gorbunova. Their research paper will be published this week in the journal Nature. Naked mole rats are small, hairless, subterranean rodents that have never been known to get cancer, despite having a 30-year lifespan. …

New resistance mechanism to chemotherapy in breast and ovarian cancer

The team led by Spanish National Cancer Research Centre researcher Óscar Fernández-Capetillo, head of the Genomic Instability Group, together with researchers from the National Cancer Institute in the US, have participated in a study that describes the causes that explain why tumours with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations stop responding to PARP inhibitor drugs. "PARP inhibitors are only toxic in tumours that have an impaired DNA repair mechanism, such as those that contain BRCA1/2 mutations" says María Nieto-Soler, a researcher from Fernández-Capetillo’s team…

Nanog protein promotes growth of head and neck cancer

The study shows that a protein called Nanog, which is normally active in embryonic stem cells, promotes the growth of cancer stem cells in head and neck cancer. The findings provide information essential for designing novel targeted drugs that might improve the treatment of head and neck cancer. Normally, Nanog helps healthy embryonic stem cells maintain their undifferentiated, uncommitted (i.e., pluripotent) state. …