The report documents cancer as the leading cause of death among Hispanic Texans under the age of 76. Only three percent of Hispanic Texans are older than 75. Texas’s Hispanic population has more than doubled since 1990. Texans of Hispanic ethnicity now comprise 38 percent of the state’s population…
The finding is published in Breast Cancer Statistics, 2013 published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The report and its consumer version, Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2013-2014, are published biennially and provide detailed analyses of breast cancer incidence, mortality, and survival trends, as well as information on early detection, treatment, and factors that influence risk and survival. An estimated 232,340 new cases of invasive breast cancer and 39,620 breast cancer deaths are expected to occur among U.S. women in 2013. …
The new method designed by the team, described in the journal Science, identified these variants in the under-explored regions of DNA that do not code for proteins, but instead influence activity of other genes. As even more whole genome sequences become available, this approach can be applied to find any potential disease-causing variant in the non-coding regions of the genome…
Researchers are constantly trying to learn more about the body’s advanced communication processes. Receptors serve as a kind of switchboard in the cell, which connects specific signaling proteins to specific cellular functions. Using state-of-the-art technology, researchers at University of Copenhagen have studied a special cell surface receptor of major importance for health and disease…
While the initial process by which cancer cells enter the bloodstream — called intravasation — is well characterized, how cells escape blood vessels to permeate other tissues and organs is less clear. This process, called extravasation, is a crucial step in cancer metastasis. Now researchers at MIT have developed a microfluidic device that mimics the flow of cancer cells through a system of blood vessels…
"We have validated a unique ‘fingerprint’ in the primary tumor of breast cancer patients that can help identify a high or low risk of cancer recurrence," says study co-author Paul Goss, MD, PhD, director of the Breast Cancer Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center. "This should enable us to offer prolonged treatment to patients who remain at risk and, importantly, to avoid the costs and side effects of treatment in those at low risk." Standard treatment for early-stage, ER-positive breast cancer includes five years of treatment with either tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor, drugs that block the action of estrogen. …
Each mutational process leaves a particular pattern of mutations, an imprint or signature, in the genomes of cancers it has caused. By studying 7,042 genomes of people with the most common forms of cancer, the team uncovered more than 20 signatures of processes that mutate DNA…
In the June 2013 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, Zagon and colleagues demonstrate that exposure of human breast cancer cell lines to OGF in vitro repressed growth within 24 hr in a receptor-mediated and reversible manner. Treatment with low dosages of the opioid antagonist naltrexone (LDN) provoked a compensatory elevation in endogenous opioids (i.e., OGF) and receptors that interact for 18-20 hr daily following receptor blockade to elicit a robust inhibition of cell proliferation. Because OGF is an endogenous neuropeptide, there are minimal or no side effects. The mechanism of action for OGF is upregulation of the p21 cyclin-dependent inhibitory kinase pathway that delays passage through the cell cycle…
The findings in a new paper Incidence of unilateral arm lymphoedema after breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the journal The Lancet Oncology, reveal the invasiveness of surgery to treat breast cancer increases the risk of developing arm lymphoedema. Lead author of the study Tracey DiSipio, from QUT’s Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said women who had undergone an axillary lymph node dissection — an invasive surgery to remove lymph nodes under the arm — were four times more likely to suffer swollen or disfigured arms. …
A new study from MIT reveals that much of this resistance develops because a protein called AXL helps cancer cells to circumvent the effects of ErbB inhibitors, allowing them to grow unchecked. The findings suggest that combining drugs that target AXL and ErbB receptors could offer a better way to fight tumors, says Doug Lauffenburger, the Ford Professor of Bioengineering, head of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and an affiliate member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research…