Cells harbour genetic material in the form of DNA, which contains all the information required for the cell to function. Every time a cell divides this information has to be precisely copied so that the newly made cell receives a perfect replica in order that it, too, can function properly. …
The University of Illinois team reports its findings in the journal Oncogene. Estrogen pre-activates the unfolded-protein response (UPR), a pathway that normally protects cells from stress, the researchers report. The UPR spurs the production of molecular chaperones that prepare cells to divide and grow. Without chaperone proteins to do the work of folding and packaging other proteins, cells — including cancer cells — cannot divide. …
The research involves a new approach to the challenge of cancer metastasis, the process by which tumors spread to and colonize distant parts of the body. Whereas research has traditionally focused on cancer cells themselves, scientists are increasingly studying the interactions between tumor cells and the tissues around them — the so-called microenvironment. …
In Europe, about 70% of patients with cervical cancer are cured by either surgery or chemo-radiotherapy. Those patients with recurrent or secondary cancer have a very poor outlook. Only about 20-30% have tumour shrinkage after conventional chemotherapy and survival is usually less than one year. In the phase II CIRCCa trial, researchers compared two groups of patients with relapsed or metastatic cervical cancer given conventional chemotherapy with carboplatin and paclitaxel plus either cediranib (34 patients) or an identical looking placebo tablet (35 patients). …
Led by Carla Koehler, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the UCLA College, the researchers identified a compound called dequalinium chloride, or DECA, that can prevent a metabolic enzyme from going to the wrong location within a cell. Ensuring that the enzyme — called alanine: glyoxylate aminotransferase, or AGT — goes to the proper “address” in the cell prevents PH1. The findings were published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will appear later in the journal’s print edition. …
“Anthrax toxin is a professional at delivering large enzymes into cells,” says Bradley Pentelute, the Pfizer-Laubauch Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry at MIT. “We wondered if we could render anthrax toxin nontoxic, and use it as a platform to deliver antibody drugs into cells.” In a paper appearing in the journal ChemBioChem, Pentelute and colleagues showed that they could use this disarmed version of the anthrax toxin to deliver two proteins known as antibody mimics, which can kill cancer cells by disrupting specific proteins inside the cells…
“Recent research has found that cancer is already adept at using cyberwarfare against the immune system, and we studied the interplay between cancer and the immune system to see how we might turn the tables on cancer,” said Rice University’s Eshel Ben-Jacob, co-author of a new study this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ben-Jacob and colleagues at Rice’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, developed a computer program that modeled a specific channel of cell-to-cell communication involving exosomes. Exosomes are tiny packets of proteins, messenger RNA and other information-coding segments that both cancer and immune cells make and use to send information to other cells…
Youhai Chen, PhD, MD, and Svetlana Fayngerts, PhD, both researchers in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues report that TIPE3, a newly described oncogenic protein, promotes cancer by targeting these pathways. Lipid second messengers play cardinal roles in relaying and amplifying signals from outside the cell to its interior and outer membrane. …
In a paper published September 17 in the online journal Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere describe the first human tests of using a perfluorocarbon (PFC) tracer in combination with non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track therapeutic immune cells injected into patients with colorectal cancer. “Initially, we see this technique used for clinical trials that involve tests of new cell therapies,” said first author Eric T. Ahrens, PhD, professor in the Department of Radiology at UC San Diego…
“This study shows that a single receptor may play various roles depending on whether its site of action is in the nucleus or on the cell membrane,” states Dr. Jean-S�bastien Joyal, MD, PhD, a pediatric intensivist at the Sainte-Justine UHC and an assistant professor at the Universit� de Montr�al. The groundbreaking discovery has significant clinical implications, since many drugs act on this family of receptors irrespective of their site of action in the cell. “Our results are extremely encouraging. …