Tag Archives: chief

Genomic study identifies subgroups of breast cancer with varying sensitivities to treatment

The study led by Aleix Prat, Principal Investigator of VHIO´s Translational Genomics Group, in collaboration with José Baselga, Physician-in-Chief of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (USA), has today been published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. The research centers on the fact that not all HER2+ tumors respond in the same way to anti-HER2 targeted therapy…

Cancer Statistics 2014: Death rates continue to drop

Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year and compiles the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival based on incidence data from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics. The data are disseminated in two reports, Cancer Statistics, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and its companion article, Cancer Facts & Figures. This year’s report estimates there will be 1,665,540 new cancer cases and 585,720 cancer deaths in the United States in 2014…

Carbon monoxide may help shrink tumors, amplify effectiveness of chemotherapy

The surprising new findings, described in the December issue of the journal Cancer Research, show that in cell culture and animal models carbon monoxide (CO) can both prevent tumor growth in prostate and lung cancers and can amplify the effectiveness of chemotherapy 1,000-fold — while sparing noncancerous tissue from chemo’s sometimes debilitating side effects. "We found that in small, carefully controlled doses, CO not only mimicked the effects of chemotherapy agents by blocking proliferation of cancer cells, but also amplified the toxic effects of the chemotherapy drugs doxorubicin and camptothecin to accelerate cancer cell death," says senior author Leo Otterbein, PhD, an investigator in the Transplant Institute in BIDMC’s Department of Surgery and Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. "Importantly and rather unique is that CO also helped to protect normal tissue from chemotherapy, which is an unfortunate side effect of the treatments." The new discovery appears to hinge on CO’s ability to switch the metabolic state of cancer cells so that tumors essentially work themselves to death…

Low-fat fish oil changes cancer tissue in prostate cancer, study shows

The findings are important because lowering the cell cycle progression (CCP) score may help prevent prostate cancers from becoming more aggressive, said study lead author William Aronson, a clinical professor of urology at UCLA and chief of urologic oncology at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "We found that CCP scores were significantly lower in the prostate cancer in men who consumed the low-fat fish oil diet as compare to men who followed a higher fat Western diet," Aronson said…

Zebrafish useful tool in prostate cancer stem cell study

Prostate cancers are suggested to contain self-renewing tumor stem cells that have the ability to grow uncontrollably and spread. Identified as tumor-initiating cells (TICs), research has shown that these cells are found to be resistant to standard chemotherapy. A desirable treatment strategy is to develop therapies that would effectively target the self-renewing capabilities of the TICs, which requires better identification of TICs themselves. Utilizing prostate cancer samples from patients diagnosed at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey between 2008 and 2012, Cancer Institute investigators used mouse and zebrafish models to identify the frequencies of TICs from each patient’s prostate cancer cells. …

Multiple, distinct Y chromosomes associated with significant excess risk of prostate cancer

The study identified multiple, distinct Y chromosomes associated with a significant excess risk of prostate cancer, said Lisa Cannon-Albright, Ph.D., Professor and Chief of the Division of Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Dr. Cannon-Albright, who headed the study and presented the results today, said that her lab plans to search these Y chromosomes for the genetic mutations that can predispose a man to develop prostate cancer, the second most frequently diagnosed cancer in the U.S. …