Category Archives: Cancer

Experimental breast cancer drug holds promise in combination therapy for Ewing sarcoma

The treatment paired two chemotherapy drugs currently used to treat Ewing sarcoma (EWS) with experimental drugs called poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors that interfere with DNA repair. PARP inhibitors are currently in clinical trials for the treatment of certain breast and ovarian cancers as well as other solid tumors. EWS is a cancer of the bone and soft tissue that strikes primarily adolescents and young adults. A clinical trial using the three-drug combination therapy detailed in this research is expected to open later this year for adolescents and young adults with EWS whose tumors have not disappeared with standard therapy or have returned after treatment…

Cancer exosome ‘micro factories’ aid in cancer progression

“Exosomes derived from cells and blood serum of patients with breast cancer, have been shown to initiate tumor growth in non-tumor-forming cells when Dicer and other proteins associated with the development of miRNAs are present,” said Raghu Kalluri, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the department of cancer biology at MD Anderson. “These findings offer opportunities for the development of exosomes-based biomarkers and shed insight into the mechanisms of how cancer spreads.” Exosomes are small vesicles consisting of DNA, RNA and proteins enclosed in a membranes made up of two lipid layers. They perform specialized functions such as coagulation, intercellular signaling and cell “waste management.” They are shed into bodily fluids forming a source of disease-specific nucleic acids and proteins. Increasingly, exosomes are studied for their potential as both indicators of disease, and as a prospective new treatment approach. …

Anaplastic lymphoma kinase immunohistochemistry testing comparable to, if not better than, fluorescence in situ hybridization testing

ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) shrink tumors and increase progression-free survival in late-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients positive for ALK as determined by the fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) test, a test for DNA rearrangement within the gene. …

Cancer exosome ‘micro factories’ aid in cancer progression — ScienceDaily

“Exosomes derived from cells and blood serum of patients with breast cancer, have been shown to initiate tumor growth in non-tumor-forming cells when Dicer and other proteins associated with the development of miRNAs are present,” said Raghu Kalluri, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the department of cancer biology at MD Anderson. “These findings offer opportunities for the development of exosomes-based biomarkers and shed insight into the mechanisms of how cancer spreads.” Exosomes are small vesicles consisting of DNA, RNA and proteins enclosed in a membranes made up of two lipid layers…

Early palliative care can cut hospital readmissions for cancer patients

The Duke researchers shared their findings at the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. In the new treatment model, medical oncologists and palliative care physicians partnered in a “co-rounding” format to deliver cancer care for patients admitted to Duke University Hospital’s solid tumor unit. The Duke model fostered collaboration and communication between the specialists, who met several times a day to discuss patient care…

Silencing the speech gene FOXP2 causes breast cancer cells to metastasize

Now a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has identified an unexpected link between a transcription factor known to regulate speech and language development and metastatic colonization of breast cancer. Currently described online in Cell Stem Cell, the new findings demonstrate that, when silenced, the FOXP2 transcription factor, otherwise known as the speech gene, endows breast cancer cells with a number of malignant traits and properties that enable them to survive — and thrive. “We have identified a previously undescribed function for the transcription factor FOXP2 in breast cancer,” explains senior author Antoine Karnoub, PhD, an investigator in the Department of Pathology at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. “We have found that depressed FOXP2 [a member of the forkhead family of transcriptional regulators] and elevated levels of its upstream inhibitor microRNA 199a are prominent features of clinically advanced breast cancers that associate with poor patient survival.” Karnoub’s lab investigates the roles that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) play in the development and metastasis of breast cancer…

How lymph nodes expand during disease

The immune system defends the body from infections and can also spot and destroy cancer cells. Lymph nodes are at the heart of this response, but until now it has never been explained how they expand during disease. The researchers — at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute — found that when a type of immune cell, called dendritic cells, recognises a threat they make a molecule called CLEC-2 that tells the cells lining the lymph nodes to stretch out and expand to allow for an influx of disease fighting cells. It’s long been known that these same dendritic cells patrol the body searching for threats and call for reinforcements to tackle them…

Fast modeling of cancer mutations

MIT researchers have now developed a new way to model the effects of these genetic mutations in mice. Their approach, based on the genome-editing technique known as CRISPR, is much faster than existing strategies, which require genetically engineering mice that carry the cancerous mutations. “It’s a very rapid and very adaptable approach to make models,” says Thales Papagiannakopoulos, a postdoc at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and one of the lead authors of the paper, which appears in the Oct…