Tag Archives: body

Natural killer cells battle pediatric leukemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer of childhood. This disease hinders the development of healthy blood cells while cancer cells proliferate. Currently, children with ALL receive chemotherapy for two to three years, exposing them to significant side effects including changes in normal development and future fertility. As a way to avoid these adverse effects, investigators have been researching how to supercharge the body’s innate cancer-fighting ability — a technique called immunotherapy…

Device monitors key step in development of tumor metastases

“This device gives us a platform to be used in testing and comparing compounds to block or delay the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, potentially slowing the progression of cancer,” says Daniel Irimia, MD, PhD, associate director of the BioMEMS Resource Center in the MGH Department of Surgery. Normally a stage in embryonic development, EMT is important during normal wound healing and also appears to take place when epithelial cells lining bodily surfaces and cavities become malignant. Instead of adhering to each other tightly in layers, cells that have undergone EMT gain the ability to separate out, move to other parts of the body and implant themselves into the new sites. Cells that have transitioned into a mesenchymal state appear to be more resistant to cancer therapies or other measures designed to induce cell death. …

Immune cell discovery could help halt cancer spread

These natural killer cells could be harnessed to hunt down and kill cancers that have spread in the body. The team, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, also found natural killer cells were critical to the body’s rejection of donor bone marrow transplants and in the runaway immune response during toxic shock syndrome. The discoveries came after the team showed that a protein called MCL-1 was crucial for survival of natural killer cells, in research published today in the journal Nature Communications. The discovery will help to determine how natural killer cells can be manipulated to fight cancers and other disorders…

Postmenopausal breast cancer risk decreases rapidly after starting regular physical activity — ScienceDaily

“Twelve MET-h [metabolic equivalent task-hours] per week corresponds to walking four hours per week or cycling or engaging in other sports two hours per week and it is consistent with the World Cancer Research Fund recommendations of walking at least 30 minutes daily,” said Agnès Fournier, PhD, a researcher in the Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health at the Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France. “So, our study shows that it is not necessary to engage in vigorous or very frequent activities; even walking 30 minutes per day is beneficial.” Postmenopausal women who in the previous four years had undertaken 12 or more MET-h of physical activity each week had a 10 percent decreased risk of invasive breast cancer compared with women who were less active. Women who undertook this level of physical activity between five and nine years earlier but were less active in the four years prior to the final data collection did not have a decreased risk for invasive breast cancer. “Physical activity is thought to decrease a woman’s risk for breast cancer after menopause,” said Fournier…

Medicine looking deeper into vital differences between women, men

That’s hardly an earth-shattering observation, but the fact is that, aside from the most obvious physical differences between the sexes, medicine has traditionally treated women as if they were merely smaller men. “When we look closely, we tend to find differences” between men and women, said Sarah L. Berga, M.D., professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology and vice president for women’s health services at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “But for most of the past, we never looked.” That started to change in the late 1980s, when physicians and researchers recognized that women’s health encompassed more than those conditions unique to females; that women’s experiences with gender-common conditions and the treatments for them often differed significantly from those of men…

Scientists unlock key to blood vessel formation

Professor David Beech, of the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds, who led the research, said: “Blood vessel networks are not already pre-constructed but emerge rather like a river system. Vessels do not develop until the blood is already flowing and they are created in response to the amount of flow. This gene, Piezo1, provides the instructions for sensors that tell the body that blood is flowing correctly and gives the signal to form new vessel structures. …

Triple therapy revs up immune system against common brain tumor

Mice with implanted, mouse-derived glioblastoma cells lived an average of 67 days after the triple therapy, compared with mice that lasted 24 days when they received only the two immunotherapies. Half of the mice who received the triple therapy lived 100 days or more and were protected against further tumors when new cancer cells were re-injected under the animals’ skins. The combination treatment described in the July 11 issue of PLOS One consists of highly focused radiation therapy targeted specifically to the tumor and strategies that lift the brakes and activate the body’s immune system, allowing anti-cancer drugs to attack the tumor…

Cell plasticity may provide clues to origin of aggressive type of breast cancer — ScienceDaily

A team of researchers, led by Candice A.M. Sauder, M.D., while a resident at the Indiana University Department of Surgery, reported online in BMC Cell Biology that healthy breast cells separated from their normal environment were able to transform into types of cells similar to those seen in metaplastic carcinoma, a form of triple negative breast cancer. The team developed 12 cell lines from the normal, healthy breast tissue from volunteer donations to the Susan G…