Study lead Menashe Bar-Eli, Ph.D., professor of Cancer Biology, reported a previously unknown target for CREB (cAMP response element-binding protein), a transcription factor that regulates other transcription factors involved in melanoma development. …
By mapping the specific steps that cells of melanoma, breast cancer and a blood cancer called myelofibrosis use to become resistant to drugs, the researchers now have much better targets for blocking those pathways and keeping current therapies effective. The findings are published in two papers Dec. 23, 2014, in the journal Science Signaling. “Clinical resistance to anticancer therapies is a major problem,” said lead author Kris Wood, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke…
Researchers at Duke Medicine have found a way to kill prostate cancer cells by delivering a trove of copper along with a drug that selectively destroys the diseased cells brimming with the mineral, leaving non-cancer cells healthy. The combination approach, which uses two drugs already commercially available for other uses, could soon be tested in clinical trials among patients with late-stage disease. “This proclivity for copper uptake is something we have known could be an Achilles’ heel in prostate cancer tumors as well as other cancers,” said Donald McDonnell, Ph.D., chairman of the Duke Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and senior author of a study published Oct. …
source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140409134310.htm
source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140218142358.htm
Metastasis, the spread of cancer from one organ to other parts of the body, relies on cancer cells ability to evade a cell death process called anoikis, according to Zachary T. Schafer, Coleman Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology at Notre Dame. Metalizing cancer cells are able to survive anoikis, which normally results from detachment from the extracellular matrix. …