Scientists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center report Oct. 29 in Nature they used human pluripotent stem cells — which can become any cell type in the body — to grow a miniature version of the stomach…
“We were trying to identify molecular switches that control the plasticity of epithelial cells,” says Ludwig Oxford director Xin Lu, who led the study with Yajun Guo of The Second Military Medical University in Shanghai, China. “Such plasticity is a hallmark of cancer. In order to metastasize, a settled cancer cell must loosen its structure, wiggle free from its confines, travel to another part of the body and, once there, settle down to form a colony…
The researchers have not progressed that far yet. Although they have spent the past 20 years developing individual components and prototypes of biological computers, bio-computers today still differ significantly from their counterparts made of silicon, and bio-engineers still face several major obstacles…
Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have uncovered details about how cancer is able to become drug resistant over time, a phenomenon that occurs because cancer cells within the same tumor aren’t identical — the cells have slight genetic variation, or diversity. The new work, published October 20 in PNAS, shows how variations in breast cancer cells’ RNA, the molecule that decodes genes and produces proteins, helps the cancer to evolve more quickly than previously thought. These new findings may potentially point to a “switch” to turn off this diversity — and thereby drug resistance — in cancer cells. …
Studies have shown that breast cancer patients treated with radiation therapy have improved local-regional recurrence, and breast cancer-specific survival after breast-conserving surgery and overall survival (OS) after mastectomy. Long-term follow-up of historic radiation therapy trials for breast cancer has demonstrated a potential increase in cardiac mortality. However, these studies used earlier modes of radiation therapy including Cobalt and orthovoltage radiotherapy, and did not employ CT-based planning, which allows for greater cardiac avoidance. Three recent studies suggest that cardiac mortality has not been greater for patients treated for left-sided breast cancer since the 1980s, when techniques allowing for greater cardiac avoidance became more commonplace[1-3]. …
The tissue-engineered esophagus formed on a relatively simple biodegradable scaffold after the researchers transplanted mouse and human organ-specific stem/progenitor cells into a murine model, according to principal investigator Tracy C. Grikscheit, MD, of the Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine program of The Saban Research Institute and pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles…
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…
In the future, the newly developed technique will enable increasingly accurate image acquisition especially during PET scans performed to detect cancers of the chest and upper abdomen, and inflammatory diseases of the heart. PET scanning, or positron emission tomography, is a modern nuclear medicine imaging method, which allows for the detection of cancer and heart conditions. Thanks to enhanced image quality, PET images provide new and increasingly accurate data, potentially improving diagnosis reliability and treatment response monitoring. High-quality image data makes the treatment more efficient both medically and financially. …
Cells harbour genetic material in the form of DNA, which contains all the information required for the cell to function. Every time a cell divides this information has to be precisely copied so that the newly made cell receives a perfect replica in order that it, too, can function properly. …
In the quest to solve cancer’s mysteries, they come in handy when describing tongue-twisting processes and pathways that somehow allow tumors to form and thrive. …