Led by Harold Swartz, MD, PhD, the team published their groundbreaking progress on the decades-old conundrum of how to measure oxygenation in deep-sited tissue in a paper titled, “Deep-Tissue Oxygen Monitoring in the Brain of Rabbits for Stroke Research,” published in Stroke. …
The finding is reported in Global Cancer Statistics, appearing in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and a consumer-friendly companion publication, Global Cancer Facts & Figures 3rd Edition, both released on World Cancer Day. The reports rely on the worldwide estimates of cancer incidence and mortality produced by the IARC for 2012 in their GLOBOCAN series…
Called iontophoresis, the technique delivers high concentrations of chemotherapy to select areas, reducing the risk of damaging healthy tissue, according to a study this week in Science Translational Medicine. “A big challenge with many drugs is getting them where they need to go,” said Lissett Bickford, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, “This technology basically forces drugs directly to and through the tumor, allowing all cancer cells in the treatment zone to get that exposure.” Bickford, who now directs the Medical Devices and Drug Delivery Lab at the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech, participated in the study during her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she worked with lead author Joseph DeSimone, the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry. Chemotherapy kills cancer cells, but it’s toxic to healthy cells, too. When it’s injected into the bloodstream, only a small amount of the drug actually gets to the tumor. …
The protein is associated with a cluster of genes (called a locus) that is also found in humans and mice. It’s the job of that locus to encode–or carry the genetic instructions for synthesizing –several cancer-fighting proteins. As Professor of Biology Vera Gorbunova explains, the locus found in naked mole rats encodes a total of four cancer-fighting proteins, while the human and mouse version encodes only three proteins. …
“It is estimated that 20% of humans at some time will need a treatment that targets the brain,” explains Meritxell Teixid�, associate researcher at IRB Barcelona and leader of this line of investigation, “and for many diseases there are some good candidate drugs but none have the capacity to reach their target and thus there is a subsequent loss of potential. Our shuttle offers a solution to an urgent clinical need.” The work has been carried out in IRB Barcelona’s Peptides and Proteins Lab. Directed by Ernest Giralt, also senior professor of the UB, this lab is one of the few leading labs worldwide devoted to these kinds of developments…
During radiation therapy for brain cancer, progenitor cells that later mature to produce the protective myelin coating around neurons are lost or significantly depleted, and there is no treatment available to restore them. These myelinating cells–called oligodendrocytes–are critical for shielding and repairing the brain’s neurons throughout life. …
As an adult, the patient contacted NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to evaluate herself and two of her children, who eventually were diagnosed with WHIM syndrome. The patient reported that her symptoms resolved in her 30s, indicating that she had maintained disease remission for nearly 20 years. In their study, NIAID researchers identify chromothripsis, the abrupt fragmentation of a chromosome, as the reason for the cure. …
Nicotine from cigarettes is a highly addictive drug that can stimulate cell growth and block cell death – two hallmark characteristics of cancer. Recent evidence also shows that nicotine can cause cancer cells to change their shape, increase their motility and become metastatic. …
The researchers also uncovered new smoking-related cancer subtypes and potential new drug targets, and found numerous genomic similarities with other cancer types. Taken together, this study’s findings may provide more detailed explanations of how HPV infection and smoking play roles in head and neck cancer risk and disease development, and offer potential novel diagnostic and treatment directions. The study is the most comprehensive examination to date of genomic alterations in head and neck cancers…
Ewing’s Sarcoma Ewing’s sarcoma is the second most common bone cancer and affects children and adolescents. Currently, if diagnosed in time and there is no metastasis, it can be cured in 80% of cases but between 25% and 30% of cases are diagnosed when there is already metastasized, at which low survival to 30 %. The study published in Cancer Research demonstrates that overexpression of the protein sirtuin 1 very significantly correlated with metastasis in patient samples Ewing Sarcoma. …