Category Archives: Cancer

How a molecular Superman protects genome from damage

It’s a familiar scenario, played out hundreds of times in the movies. But the dramatic scene is reenacted in real life every time a cell divides. In order for division to occur, our genetic material must be faithfully replicated by a highly complicated machine, whose parts are tiny enough to navigate among the strands of the double helix. The problem is that our DNA is constantly in use, with other molecular machines continually plucking at its strands to gain access to critical genes. …

New treatment target identified for aggressive breast cancer — ScienceDaily

The gene ErbB2, commonly called HER2, is highly expressed in about 25 percent of breast cancers. Scientists have now found the protein Erbin, thought to be an anti-tumor factor, also is highly expressed in these cancers and essential to ErbB2’s support of breast cancer. When scientists interfere with the interaction between the two in mice, it inhibits tumor development and the usual spread to the lungs, according to an international team reporting in the journal PNAS. The team documented the overexpression of both in 171 cases of mostly aggressive human breast cancer as well. …

Ebola highlights disparity of disease burden in developed vs. developing countries

“Our goal is to provide information about trends and patterns to bring to light what’s going on around the world so that funds can be allocated and policy developed as needed,” says Lindsay Boyers, medical student at Georgetown University, working in the lab or Robert Dellavalle, MD, PhD, MSPH investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, associate professor of dermatology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the paper’s senior author. The paper used data from the Global Burden of Disease Study, an ongoing project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to collect a billion data points describing the distribution of the world’s diseases. Of the 269 diseases in the GBD database, this study compares rates in developed versus developing countries of Ebola, malignant melanoma, basal and squamous cell carcinoma, decubitus ulcer, bacterial skin diseases, cellulitis, varicella (including chickenpox, congenital varicella infection, and herpes zoster), syphilis, measles, and dengue. Specifically, findings show that in 2010 the measles death rate was 197 times greater in developing countries than in developed countries, but this ratio was down from 345-to-1 in 1990. …

Ovarian cancer: New test can help doctors choose best treatment

Successful treatment depends in part on accurately identifying the type of tumor, but this can be difficult. As a result, many women with cancer are not sent to the right specialist surgeon, or those with a benign cyst may have a more serious operation than they need. In a study published today in the British Medical Journal, an international team led by Imperial College London and KU Leuven, Belgium describe a new test, called ADNEX, which can discriminate between benign and malignant tumors, and identify different types of malignant tumor, with a high level of accuracy. The test is based on the patient’s clinical information, a simple tumor marker blood test and features that can be identified on an ultrasound scan…

Prostate cancer’s penchant for copper may be a fatal flaw

Researchers at Duke Medicine have found a way to kill prostate cancer cells by delivering a trove of copper along with a drug that selectively destroys the diseased cells brimming with the mineral, leaving non-cancer cells healthy. The combination approach, which uses two drugs already commercially available for other uses, could soon be tested in clinical trials among patients with late-stage disease. …

New mechanism affecting cell migration found

Cell migration has mainly been studied in cell culture environment. However, in animal tissues cells predominantly migrate in a three-dimensional environment, where they have to push through adjacent cell-layers and extracellular matrix. Migrating cells are known to form dynamic protrusions at their leading edge, but the function of these actin-rich protrusions has remained elusive. By using fruit fly as a model system, Minna Poukkula working at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, has found out how actin-rich protrusions contribute to cell migration in animal tissues…

Boosting heart’s natural ability to recover after heart attack

This switch is driven by p53, the well-documented tumor-suppressing protein. The UNC researchers showed that increasing the level of p53 in scar-forming cells significantly reduced scarring and improved heart function after heart attack. The finding, which was published today in the journal Nature, shows that it is possible to limit the damage wrought by heart attacks, which strike nearly one million people in the United States each year. Heart disease accounts for one in four deaths every year…

Optimal particle size for anticancer nanomedicines discovered

“To develop next generation nanomedicines with superior anti-cancer attributes, we must understand the correlation between their physicochemical properties — specifically, particle size — and their interactions with biological systems,” explains Jianjun Cheng, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In a recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cheng and his collaborators systematically evaluated the size-dependent biological profiles of three monodisperse drug-silica nanoconjugates at 20, 50 and 200 nm…

Personalized cellular therapy achieves complete remission in 90 percent of acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients studied

The new data, which builds on preliminary findings presented at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting in December 2013, include results from the first 25 children and young adults (ages 5 to 22) treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and first five adults (ages 26 to 60) treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Twenty-seven of the 30 patients in the studies achieved a complete remission after receiving an infusion of these engineered “hunter” cells, and 78 percent of the patients were alive six months after treatment. “The patients who participated in these trials had relapsed as many as four times, including 60 percent whose cancers came back even after stem cell transplants. Their cancers were so aggressive they had no treatment options left,” said the study’s senior author, Stephan Grupp, MD, PhD, a professor of Pediatrics in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and director of Translational Research in the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia…