"Genetic mutations do not drive this mechanism," said Alana Welm, PhD, senior author of the study, associate professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences, and an investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute. "Instead, it’s improper regulation of when genes turn on and off." The new discovery focuses on a protein called RON kinase (RON), which signals some areas of tumor cell DNA to become active…
The method uses a drug which breaks down the protective barrier surrounding pancreatic cancer tumors, enabling cancer-attacking T cells to get through. The drug is used in combination with an antibody that blocks a second target, which improves the activity of these T cells. Initial tests of the combined treatment, carried out by researchers at the University’s Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, resulted in almost complete elimination of cancer cells in one week. The findings, reported in the journal PNAS, mark the first time this has been achieved in any pancreatic cancer model. …
Many projects have tried to study nutrients that are naturally available in the human diet the same way they would a powerful prescription drug. This leads to conclusions that have little scientific meaning, even less accuracy and often defy a wealth of other evidence, said Balz Frei, professor and director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, in a new review published in the journal Nutrients. These flawed findings will persist until the approach to studying micronutrients is changed, Frei said. Such changes are needed to provide better, more scientifically valid information to consumers around the world who often have poor diets, do not meet intake recommendations for many vitamins and minerals, and might greatly benefit from something as simple as a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement…
The research team found that people with a genetic variant present in approximately 15 percent of the world population can express an additional immune system receptor on their B cells, the cells that make antibodies. This additional receptor, called an Fc receptor, binds the antibodies made by B cells and plays a key role in regulating their production. Part of the immune system, antibodies can recognize invaders like bacteria and remove them from the body. …
Sophisticated computer modelling could be used to slowly move the table — known as a couch — and a radiation source in three dimensions to direct radiation precisely to the patient’s tumor, researchers have suggested. At the moment, a radiotherapy table can be angled during treatment, but there is no way to synchronise its rotation with a moving radiation beam. But with some modifications, an upgraded system could move both the patient and the beam while reducing the radiation dose of healthy tissue…
"When you have known oncogenes that are already targeted by FDA-approved drugs, it just made sense to look for these oncogenes in other cancers," says Marileila Varella Garcia, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and professor at the CU School of Medicine. "By rethinking the way we understand cancers — as their genetic mutations and not just as the sites where they live in the body — we see that a therapy that targets a specific mutation may show benefit in treating any other cancer that shares the same mutation," says Dara Aisner, MD, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and molecular pathologist at the CU School of Medicine…
The researchers, Alain Silk, Ph.D., Melissa Wong, Ph.D., and colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland followed the work of German pathologist Otto Aichel, who suggested in 1911 that a cancer cell under attack by a white blood cell might spontaneously fuse with that cell to produce a hybrid cell with chromosomal abnormalities that could lead to cancer. Although Aichel’s theory was dismissed by his contemporaries, recent discoveries about the broader role of cell fusion in tissue homeostasis and regeneration have revived scientific interest in his ideas. Today there is strong evidence of fusion between cancer and normal cells in human cancer, but it has not been apparent whether cell fusion could provide cancer cells with a selective advantage that enhances cancer progression…
By studying zebrafish embryo skin, University of Michigan researchers decoded cell messages underlying abnormal colonic cell growth of the kind that can lead to tumors and colon cancer in calcium deficient individuals. They have also tested this new mechanism in human colon cancer cells. Ultimately, the new biological mechanism unraveled in zebrafish will help scientists understand the pathways that fuel low calcium-related abnormal colonic cell growth and how to stop that growth, said Cunming Duan, professor in the U-M Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology. To do this, Duan and colleagues used a fluorescent protein to mark a type of epithelial cell, whose job it is to import calcium into the body. …
A new finding by University of Pennsylvania scientists has identified key steps that trigger this disintegration of cellular regulation. Their discovery — that a protein called Exo70 has a split personality, with one form keeping cells under tight control and another contributing to the ability of tumors to invade distant parts of the body — points to new possibilities for diagnosing cancer metastasis. The research, published in the journal Developmental Cell, was conducted by a team of researchers from the School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology; the Perelman School of Medicine’s pathobiology and laboratory medicine, medicine and genetics departments, and China’s Hangzhou Normal University School of Medicine. …
Two of the first three chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients who participated in the study, which started in the summer of 2010, remain in remission, with tests revealing reprogrammed cells still circulating in their bodies, on guard to combat tumor cells that may reappear in the future. Additional highlights of the new research results include an 89 percent complete response rate among adult and pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). "In a very short time, we’ve learned so much about how CTL019 works and how powerful it can be," said the research team’s leader, Carl H…