Tag Archives: biology

Clinical waste may be valuable for monitoring treatment response in ovarian cancer

"We were able to demonstrate that simply squirting small amounts of otherwise discarded ascites fluid into our device allowed us to quantify tumor cells and explore mechanistic markers of tumor progression without the need to process liters of ascites with advanced instrumentation not readily available in many community hospitals," says Cesar Castro, MD, MMSc, MGH Cancer Center and Center for Systems Biology, co-lead author of the PNAS paper. "Moreover, achieving point-of-care readouts of tumor cell markers from repeatedly collected ascites at different time points, could allow for frequent monitoring of treatment response without having to wait for the next imaging scan." The ability to reliably track treatment response essentially lets caregivers know whether a particular anticancer drug should be continued or if another option should be tried. Tumor recurrence begins before metastases become visible on imaging studies, so several options for non-invasive "liquid biopsies" are being investigated, including analysis of circulating tumor cells and other factors found in the blood. Since ovarian cancer metastases are usually confined to the abdominal cavity and ascites commonly form in advanced disease, the research team theorized that ascites fluid could be an alternative, if not better, option than blood for treatment monitoring. …

Predictor of prostate cancer outcomes identified

The study, posted online recently in advance of publication in Cancer Research, was led by co-investigators Andries Zijlstra, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt, and John Lewis, Ph.D., associate professor of Oncology and Frank and Carla Sojonky Chair in Prostate Cancer Research, University of Alberta. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men in North America…

Researchers unravel role of Rb tumor suppressor in aggressive breast cancer

The findings of Rb’s role at multiple points in the disease process point to a potential new therapeutic target in patients with the most aggressive subset of breast cancer, known as basal-like breast carcinomas. This type of cancer has no estrogen receptor expression, and to date there is no efficient therapy for patients who suffer from it, leaving them with a generally poor prognosis. …

New study suggests low vitamin D causes damage to brain

In addition to being essential for maintaining bone health, newer evidence shows that vitamin D serves important roles in other organs and tissue, including the brain. Published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, the UK study showed that middle-aged rats that were fed a diet low in vitamin D for several months developed free radical damage to the brain, and many different brain proteins were damaged as identified by redox proteomics. These rats also showed a significant decrease in cognitive performance on tests of learning and memory. "Given that vitamin D deficiency is especially widespread among the elderly, we investigated how during aging from middle-age to old-age how low vitamin D affected the oxidative status of the brain," said lead author on the paper Allan Butterfield, professor in the UK Department of Chemistry, director of the Center of Membrane Sciences, faculty of Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, and director of the Free Radical Biology in Cancer Core of the Markey Cancer Center. …

Detailed image shows how genomes are copied

Genomes are built from pairs of long strands of DNA. In previous collaborations with American researchers, Umeå University scientists have shown that DNA polymerase epsilon is one of the three enzymes that build DNA strands in all higher-level organisms from yeast to humans. When the DNA of an organism’s genome is copied, DNA polymerase epsilon is responsible for building about half of the DNA. This process occurs quickly and with very high accuracy to avoid producing mutations that can be detrimental to the cell and to the organism as a whole. …

Colon cancer researchers target stem cells, discover viable new therapeutic path

"This is the first step toward clinically applying the principles of cancer stem cell biology to control cancer growth and advance the development of durable cures," says principal investigator Dr. John Dick about the findings published online today in Nature Medicine…

Protien Cyclin D1 governs microRNA processing in breast cancer

"In addition to its role in regulating the cell cycle, cyclin D1 induces Dicer and thereby promotes the maturation of miRNA," says lead researcher Richard Pestell, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University and Chair of the Department of Cancer Biology. Dicer is a protein that converts inactive hairpin-structured microRNA precursors into their active single stranded form. "The work supports the idea that cancer-causing proteins like cyclin D1 may drive cancer progression in part via miRNA biogenesis." Using antisense RNA, Dr. Pestell’s group was the first to show that cyclin D1 drives mammary tumor growth in vivo. …

Researchers identify rescuer for vital tumor-suppressor

"We discovered that the enzyme USP13 stabilizes the PTEN protein by reversing a process that marks various proteins for destruction by the cell’s proteasome," said the paper’s senior author Li Ma, Ph.D., assistant professor of Experimental Radiation Oncology. "USP13 also suppresses tumor formation and glycolysis though PTEN," Ma said. Glycolysis is a glucose metabolism pathway that tumors rely on to thrive and grow…