Tag Archives: carolina

New genetic target for a different kind of cancer drug found — ScienceDaily

“Historically, scientists haven’t targeted the proteins in cancer cells that are involved in gene splicing,” said Zefeng Wang, PhD, associate professor in the department of pharmacology and senior author of the Cancer Cell paper. “This is a whole new ballgame in terms of gene regulation in cancer.” There are approximately 25,000 genes in the human genome — the same amount as in a fruit fly. But in humans, these genes are spliced together in different ways to create various kinds of messenger RNA to produce the many different proteins humans require. It’s like a filmmaker splicing together bits of movie scenes to create alternative cuts of a movie…

Common diabetes drug not linked to short-term risk of pancreatic cancer

“Our research shows that short-term use of DPP-4 inhibitors in older diabetes patients does not increase their risk for pancreatic cancer,” said John Buse, MD, PhD, director of the Diabetes Care Center at UNC and co-author of the paper in the current issue of the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. “However, we just cannot address the long-term safety, yet. There are just not enough people who have taken the drug for many years.” DPP-4 inhibitors came on the market in 2006. Since then, these drugs have become some of the most commonly prescribed diabetes medications, primarily because they often cause fewer side effects compared to other diabetes treatments…

Powerful new system for classifying tumors revealed — ScienceDaily

“It’s only ten percent that were classified differently, but it matters a lot if you’re one of those patients,” said senior author Josh Stuart, a professor of biomolecular engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Stuart helped organize the study as part of the Pan-Cancer Initiative of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project…

Powerful new system for classifying tumors revealed

“It’s only ten percent that were classified differently, but it matters a lot if you’re one of those patients,” said senior author Josh Stuart, a professor of biomolecular engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Stuart helped organize the study as part of the Pan-Cancer Initiative of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project…