Category Archives: Cancer

Proton therapy shown to be less costly than some alternative radiotherapy techniques for early stage breast cancer

In a cost analysis study based on typical patient characteristics, researchers used Medicare reimbursement codes to analyze allowable charges for eight different types of partial and whole breast irradiation therapies and treatment schedules available to early stage breast cancer patients. Taken together, these represent roughly 98% of the treatment options available to these patients. …

Viewing cancer on the move: New device yields close-up look at metastasis

The inventors, from the university’s Whiting School of Engineering and its Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT), published details and images from their new system recently in the journal Cancer Research. Their article reported on successful tests that captured video of human breast cancer cells as they burrowed through reconstituted body tissue material and made their way into an artificial blood vessel. “There’s still so much we don’t know about exactly how tumor cells migrate through the body, partly because, even using our best imaging technology, we haven’t been able to see precisely how these individual cells move into blood vessels,” said Andrew D. …

A matter of life and death: Cell death proteins key to fighting disease

The research teams from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute worked together to discover the three-dimensional structure of a key cell death protein called Bak and reveal the first steps in how it causes cell death. Their studies were published in Molecular Cell and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Programmed cell death, known as apoptosis, occurs naturally when the body has to remove unwanted cells. Chemical signals tell the cell to die by activating the apoptosis proteins Bak and Bax, which break down the ‘energy factory’ of the cell, known as the mitochondria. …

Decoding the emergence of metastatic cancer stem cells

“Cells have genetic circuits that are used to switch certain behaviors on and off,” said biophysicist Eshel Ben-Jacob, a senior investigator at Rice’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics and co-author of a new study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. “Though some of the circuits for metastasis have been mapped, this is the first study to examine how cancer uses two of those circuits, in concert, to produce not just cancer stem cells, but also dangerous packs of hybrid stem-like-cells that travel in groups to colonize other parts of the body.” Metastasis — the spread of cancer between organs — causes more than 90 percent of cancer deaths, but not all tumor cells can metastasize…

Proton therapy shown to be less costly than some alternative radiotherapy techniques for early stage breast cancer — ScienceDaily

In a cost analysis study based on typical patient characteristics, researchers used Medicare reimbursement codes to analyze allowable charges for eight different types of partial and whole breast irradiation therapies and treatment schedules available to early stage breast cancer patients. Taken together, these represent roughly 98% of the treatment options available to these patients. The cost of proton therapy when used for APBI, introduced to decrease overall treatment time and toxicity, was estimated at $13,833. Comparatively, WBI using IMRT (x-ray) therapy resulted in the highest Medicare charges at $19,599. …

New molecular imaging technology could improve bladder-cancer detection — ScienceDaily

The researchers identified a protein known as CD47 as a molecular imaging target to distinguish bladder cancer from benign tissues. In the future, this technique could improve bladder cancer detection, guide more precise cancer surgery and reduce unnecessary biopsies, therefore increasing cancer patients’ quality of life. The work is described in a paper that will be published Oct. 29 in Science Translational Medicine…

Clock gene dysregulation may explain overactive bladder — ScienceDaily

“We hope our study will stimulate further progress in understanding circadian control of body physiology and aging-related dysfunction and ultimately lead to new strategies of treatment by targeting the circadian regulatory process, including non-drug treatment approaches,” said Changhao Wu, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Biochemistry and Physiology at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. To make this discovery, scientists used genetically modified mice in which a special wavelength of light was emitted when the clock proteins were produced in isolated bladder tissue. This light reported real-time clock expression and acted directly as a measure of peripheral clock expression…