Category Archives: Cancer

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

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. “This proclivity for copper uptake is something we have known could be an Achilles’ heel in prostate cancer tumors as well as other cancers,” said Donald McDonnell, Ph.D., chairman of the Duke Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and senior author of a study published Oct. …

New, precise way to turn genes on and off

The key to the advance is a new invention, called the SunTag, a series of molecular hooks for hanging multiple copies of biologically active molecules onto a single protein scaffold used to target genes or other molecules. Compared to molecules assembled without these hooks, those incorporating the SunTag can greatly amplify biological activity. …

Precise control over genes results from game-changing research

The key to the advance is a new invention, called the SunTag, a series of molecular hooks for hanging multiple copies of biologically active molecules onto a single protein scaffold used to target genes or other molecules. Compared to molecules assembled without these hooks, those incorporating the SunTag can greatly amplify biological activity. …

Immune cells in liver drive fatty liver disease, liver cancer

These liver diseases (NAFLD and NASH), along with chronic viral infections, are the most common causes of liver cancer, or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In the United States, about 90 million people suffer from NAFLD. In Europe, the figure is more than 40 million, and even in threshold countries like India and China, the number of people affected is rising due to increasingly unhealthy lifestyles. More worrying, in all of the above mentioned states the numbers of NAFLD and NASH patients is constantly increasing. …

How metastases develop in the liver

But during development of metastases, the control function of this inhibitor appears not only to fail but to swing in the opposite direction and to actually promote the formation of metastases. Observations in numerous cancer patients have shown that high levels of the inhibitor TIMP-1 in the blood did not slow the spread of cancer. On the contrary, it actually hastened the progression of the disease…

Discovery of cellular snooze button advances cancer, biofuel research

The discovery that the protein CHT7 is a likely repressor of cellular quiescence, or resting state, is published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This cellular switch, which influences algae’s growth and oil production, also wields control of cellular growth — and tumor growth — in humans…

Molecular ‘breadcrumb trail’ that helps melanoma spread found

The team at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute at the University of Glasgow, revealed that melanoma cells give themselves the ‘green light’ to move using the molecule — a type of fatty chemical called lysophosphatidic acid (LPA). This signal prompts them to travel and spread in the body. The researchers showed in cancer cell lines and mice that tumour cells start their journey by first breaking down a nearby source of LPA molecules…