Tag Archives: cancer treatment

Promising new method for rapidly screening cancer drugs

As Rotello and his doctoral graduate student Le Ngoc, one of the lead authors, explain, to discover a new drug for any disease, researchers must screen billions of compounds, which can take months. One of the added keys to bringing a new drug to market, they add, is to identify how it works, its chemical mechanism. “Rapid determination of drug mechanism would greatly streamline the drug discovery process, opening the pipeline of new therapeutics,” Ngoc says. She adds, “Drugs with different mechanisms cause changes in the surface of cells that can be read out using the new sensor system…

Getting antibodies into shape to fight cancer

The latest types of treatment for cancer are designed to switch on the immune system, allowing the patient’s own immune cells to attack and kill cancerous cells, when normally the immune cells would lie dormant. In a study, funded by Cancer Research UK and published in the journal Cancer Cell, the Southampton team have found that a particular form of antibody, called IgG2B, is much more effective at stimulating cancer immunity than other types. Unlike other forms of antibody, IgG2B can work independently without needing help from other immune cells, making it more active and able to work in all tissues of the body. The team have also been able to engineer antibodies that will be locked into the particular shape (called a locked B structure) that is most active, making them much stronger immune stimulators than previous drugs…

Tool to better classify tumor cells developed for personalized cancer treatments

Just as cancer is not a single disease, but a collection of many diseases, an individual tumor is not likely to be comprised of just one type of cancer cell. In fact, the genetic mutations that lead to cancer in the first place also often result in tumors with a mix of cancer cell subtypes. The WPI team developed a new statistical model that uses an advanced algorithm to identify these multiple genetic subtypes in solid tumors by analyzing gene expression data from a small biopsy sample…

Majority of women with early-stage breast cancer in U.S. receive unnecessarily long courses of radiation

“Hypofractionated radiation is infrequently used for women with early-stage breast cancer, even though it’s high-quality, patient-centric cancer care at lower cost,” said lead author Bekelman, an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology, Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and Abramson Cancer Center. “It is clinically equivalent to longer duration radiation in curing breast cancer, has similar side effects, is more convenient for patients, and allows patients to return to work or home sooner.” Shown to reduce local recurrence and improve overall survival after breast conserving surgery, conventional whole breast radiation, given daily over five to seven weeks, has been the mainstay of treatment in the U.S. for women for decades…

Zinc test could help diagnose breast cancer early — ScienceDaily

In a world-first the researchers were able to show that changes in the isotopic composition of zinc, which can be detected in a person’s breast tissue, could make it possible to identify a ‘biomarker’ (a measurable indicator) of early breast cancer. A report of the research by the Oxford University-led team, which included researchers from Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum, London, is published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Metallomics. The pilot study analysed zinc in the blood and blood serum of ten subjects (five breast cancer patients and five healthy controls) alongside a range of breast tissue samples from breast cancer patients. By using techniques that are over 100 times more sensitive to changes in the isotopic composition of metals than anything currently used by clinicians, the researchers were able to show that they could detect key differences in zinc caused when cancer subtly alters the way that cells process the metal…

Platinum agent combination treatment for triple-negative breast cancer well tolerated in phase II clinical trial — ScienceDaily

Triple-negative breast cancer is characterized by the absence of estrogen and progesterone receptors and the HER2/neu protein in breast cancer cells. That in itself presents a challenge in treating the disease, as it does not respond to hormonal- or HER2-targeted therapies that provide for positive outcomes in other subtypes of breast cancer. Triple-negative breast cancers are often deficient in DNA repair and other specific cellular pathways that make them susceptible to DNA damage. There is growing evidence that suggests platinum-based agents may offer improved outcomes in treating the subset of triple-negative breast cancer because of their specificity for causing DNA damage…

Metal test could help diagnose breast cancer early — ScienceDaily

Platinum agent combination treatment for triple-negative breast cancer well tolerated in phase II clinical trial

Metal test could help diagnose breast cancer early

Scientists pinpoint a new line of defense used by cancer cells

The team identified a critical pathway of molecular signals which throw a lifeline to cancer cells, enabling them to survive even though they contain vast DNA errors which would usually trigger cell death. The PKCƐ signal pathway, which is used by cancer cells but rarely by normal cells, could be important in targeting some cancer cells as they rely on this pathway to survive…