Tag Archives: chief

Blood test could identify when cancer treatment has become detrimental — ScienceDaily

Researchers identified the emergence of drug-resistant cancer cells by testing repeated blood samples from patients with advanced prostate cancer. They set out a new ‘treatment paradigm’ — the constant monitoring of patients using a blood test for signs that therapy is becoming counter-productive. The study was conducted at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Trento in Italy. …

Ultraviolet light-induced mutation drives many skin cancers, researchers find

The mutation occurs in a gene called KNSTRN, which is involved in helping cells divide their DNA equally during cell division. Genes that cause cancer when mutated are known as oncogenes. Although KNSTRN hasn’t been previously implicated as a cause of human cancers, the research suggests it may be one of the most commonly mutated oncogenes in the world. “This previously unknown oncogene is activated by sunlight and drives the development of cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas,” said Paul Khavari, MD, PhD, the Carl J…

Preclinical development of tumor therapeutic agent begins

amcure, one of the partners of which is KIT, now plans to use the funds acquired for the further development of candidate agents identified by the team of Dr. Veronique Orian-Rousseau, KIT, for the treatment of metastatic tumors. The candidate substances bind specifically to a certain so-called isoform of the surface molecule CD44 and, thus, specifically interfere with central signal paths of tumor growth, while other types of cells remain unaffected. New formation of blood vessels supplying the tumor (angiogenesis) and migration of cancer cells and their invasion into other organs (development of metastases) are inhibited…

Novel drug action against solid tumors explained

Their paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the culmination of nearly a decade of research into the role of arginine — and its deprivation — in the generation of excessive autophagy, a process in which the cell dies by eating itself. Study co-author Hsing-Jien Kung, a cancer biologist and UC Davis professor emeritus who now leads the National Health Research Institutes in Taipei, Taiwan, first discovered the mechanism by which arginine deprivation works in 2009, when he led basic science research at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Traditional cancer therapies involve ‘poisoning’ by toxic chemicals or ‘burning’ by radiation cancer cells to death, which often have side effects,” Kung said. “An emerging strategy is to ‘starve’ cancer cells to death, taking advantage of the different metabolic requirements of normal and cancer cells. …

Gene increases risk of breast cancer to one in three by age 70

In a study run through the international PALB2 Interest Group a team of researchers from 17 centres in eight countries led by the University of Cambridge analysed data from 154 families without BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, which included 362 family members with PALB2 gene mutations. The effort was funded by the European Research Council, Cancer Research UK and multiple other international sources. Women who carried rare mutations in PALB2 were found to have on average a 35% chance of developing breast cancer by the age of seventy…

Tumor suppressor mutations alone don’t explain deadly cancer: Biomarker for head and neck cancers identified

The study, published online August 3 in the journal Nature Genetics, shows that high mortality rates among head and neck cancer patients tend to occur only when mutations in the tumor suppressor gene coincide with missing segments of genetic material on the cancer genome’s third chromosome. The link between the two had not been observed before because the mutations co-occur in about 70 percent of head and neck tumors and because full genetic fingerprints of large numbers of cancer tumors have become available only recently…

Drug shows promise for the first time against metastatic melanoma of the eye

“Although the effects of the drug were modest, we now know that we can influence the course of the disease, and we expect to build on this success with other drugs, including some already in development,” said senior author, Gary K. Schwartz, MD, professor of medicine and chief of hematology/oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center and associate director of its Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. (At the time of the trial, Dr. Schwartz was chief of the melanoma and sarcoma service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.) Uveal melanoma is a cancer of the iris, ciliary body, or choroid — structures in the eye collectively known as the uvea…

Cancer mutations identified as targets of effective melanoma immunotherapy

“This study provides the technical solution to identify mutated tumor targets that can stimulate immune responses, which is one of the major bottlenecks in developing a new generation of adoptive T-cell therapy,” said Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland. “The two targets identified in this study play important roles in cancer cell proliferation…