Category Archives: Cancer

‘Bad luck’ of random mutations plays predominant role in cancer, study shows

“All cancers are caused by a combination of bad luck, the environment and heredity, and we’ve created a model that may help quantify how much of these three factors contribute to cancer development,” says Bert Vogelstein, M.D., the Clayton Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “Cancer-free longevity in people exposed to cancer-causing agents, such as tobacco, is often attributed to their ‘good genes,’ but the truth is that most of them simply had good luck,” adds Vogelstein, who cautions that poor lifestyles can add to the bad luck factor in the development of cancer. The implications of their model range from altering public perception about cancer risk factors to the funding of cancer research, they say. “If two-thirds of cancer incidence across tissues is explained by random DNA mutations that occur when stem cells divide, then changing our lifestyle and habits will be a huge help in preventing certain cancers, but this may not be as effective for a variety of others,” says biomathematician Cristian Tomasetti, Ph.D., an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. …

More than 1.5 million cancer deaths averted during 2 decades of dropping mortality — ScienceDaily

Each year, the American Cancer Society compiles the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival based on incidence data from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics. The data are disseminated in two reports: Cancer Statistics 2015, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and its companion, consumer-friendly publication, Cancer Facts & Figures 2015. The reports also estimate the number of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year. …

Neonatal HBV vaccine reduces liver cancer risk

The researchers report long-term outcomes from the Qidong Hepatitis B intervention Study (QHBIS), a randomized controlled trial of neonatal HBV vaccination that was conducted between 1983 and 1990 in Qidong County, a rural area in China with a high incidence of HBV-related primary liver cancer (PLC) and other liver diseases. In this study, 41 rural towns (including a total of 77,658 newborns over the study period) were randomized to the intervention (HBV vaccination for all newborns) or control (no vaccination) groups, with two-thirds of the control group participants receiving a catch-up vaccination at age 10-14 years. By collecting data on new cases of liver diseases over 30 years from a population-based tumor registry, the researchers estimated that the protective efficacy of vaccination was 84% for primary liver cancer (vaccination reduced the incidence of liver cancer by 84%), 70% for death from liver diseases, and 69% for the incidence of infant fulminant hepatitis. …

Cancer treatment potential discovered in gene repair mechanism

If the laboratory findings are supported by tests in animal models, the breakthrough could hold the promise of increasing the effectiveness of radiation and chemotherapy in shrinking or even eliminating tumors. The key is to build up a “good” protein — p53-binding protein 1 (53BP1) — so that it weakens the cancer cells, leaving them more susceptible to existing cancer-fighting measures. The breakthrough detailed appeared in the Nov. 24 online edition of the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). …

Lung cancer metastases may travel through airways to adjacent or distant lung tissue

Lung cancer is the most common and most lethal cancer worldwide. Its prognosis remains poor: The 5-year survival rate is 6-18%. Adenocarcinoma has surpassed squamous cell carcinoma as the leading histologic type, accounting for 30% of all cases of lung cancer. Hematogenous spread (i.e., carried by blood) is the most common mechanism of intrapulmonary metastasis…

Protein identified as possible universal therapeutic target for many infections, including Ebola

By using a drug combination of the clinically tested OSU-03012 (AR-12) and FDA approved Phosphodiesterase 5 Inhibitors (Viagra, Cialis) to target GRP78 and related proteins, researchers prevented the replication of a variety of major viruses in infected cells, made antibiotic-resistant bacteria vulnerable to common antibiotics and found evidence that brain cancer stem cells were killed. Data were obtained in multiple brain cancer stem cell types, and using Influenza, Mumps, Measles, Rubella, RSV, CMV, Adenovirus, Coxsakie virus, Chikungunya, Ebola, Hepatitis, E. coli, MRSA, MRSE and N. …