Category Archives: Cancer

New viral mutation made middle-aged adults more susceptible to last year’s flu

“We identified a mutation in recent H1N1 strains that allows viruses to avoid immune responses that are present in a large number of middle-aged adults,” said Scott Hensley, Ph.D., a member of Wistar’s Vaccine Center and an assistant professor in the Translational Tumor Immunology program of Wistar’s Cancer Center. Historically, children and the elderly are most susceptible to the severe effects of the influenza viruses, largely because they have weaker immune systems…

Years after treatment for HER2-positve early stage breast cancer, trastuzumab continues to show life-altering benefit — ScienceDaily

They found that the use of trastuzumab produced a 37 percent improvement in survival and a 40 percent reduction in risk of cancer occurrence, compared to patients treated with chemotherapy alone. These findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, demonstrate how important trastuzumab has been to the treatment of this form of breast cancer, says the study’s lead author, Edith A. Perez, M.D., deputy director at large, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and director of the Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program at Mayo Clinic in Florida. “This long follow-up of patients shows that we have really altered the natural history of this disease,” says Dr…

Head injury causes immune system to attack brain, new study finds

To date, there are no effective treatments to prevent or reverse the damage sustained after brain injury. The researchers were testing the theory that blows to the head cause brain damage, in part, because of the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier, allowing the immune cells in the blood to come into contact with brain cells and destroy them. They hypothesized that mice missing a vital immune component would have less brain damage from trauma, and that a treatment which blocks a component of the immune system would prevent damage. …

Artificial light, biological clock disruptions, increase breast cancer risk, study finds

“Exposure to artificial light leads to a significantly higher risk for developing breast cancer,” said Chunla He, a biostatistics graduate student in the UGA College of Public Health. “To decrease the use of artificial light, people should avoid working at night and implement earlier bed times.” Her research, published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, examined key studies that included risk factors for developing breast cancer. …

3-D printed facial prosthesis offers new hope for eye cancer patients following surgery

In the United States, more than 2,700 new cases of eye cancer are diagnosed each year, according to the American Cancer Society, and the mortality rate is high for the disease. Some patients undergo a life-saving surgery known as exenteration that involves removing the contents of the eye socket and other tissue…

Genetic variant protects some Latina women from breast cancer

The variant, a difference in just one of the three billion “letters” in the human genome known as a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), originates from indigenous Americans and confers significant protection from breast cancer, particularly the more aggressive estrogen receptor-negative forms of the disease, which generally have a worse prognosis. “The effect is quite significant,” said Elad Ziv, MD, professor of medicine and senior author of the study. “If you have one copy of this variant, which is the case for approximately 20% (the range being 10 to 25 percent) of U.S. …

Earlier unknown molecular-level mechanism may contribute to growth rate of breast cancer

MicroRNAs are small intracellular RNA molecules that regulate gene expression. Therefore, they play important roles in various normal processes of the human body, such as embryogenesis, and the regulation of cell viability. In addition, it is known that abnormal amounts of microRNA stimulate the onset and development of different diseases, such as cancer…

Advances in creating treatment for common childhood blood cancer

An estimated quarter of the 500 U.S. adolescents and young adults diagnosed each year with this aggressive disease fail to respond to standard chemotherapy drugs that target cancer cells. In a report on the work conducted with mice and human laboratory cells, and published in the Oct. 23 edition of the journal Nature, the NYU Langone team concludes that the enzyme JMJD3 — (pronounced ju-mon-ji D3) — acts as a cancer “on” switch by splitting off a chemical methyl group of another protein that is usually methylated by a tumor-suppressing enzyme. …