Tag Archives: disease

Drug cuts breast cancer cases by more than 50% in high risk women

The results of the IBIS II trial, funded by Cancer Research UK and led by Queen Mary University of London, could offer a new option for preventing breast cancer in high risk post-menopausal women which is more effective than tamoxifen and has fewer side-effects. The study looked at almost 4,000 postmenopausal women at high risk of breast cancer with half being given 1mg of anastrozole daily and half given a placebo. In the five years of follow up 40 women in the anastrozole group developed breast cancer compared to 85 women placebo group. …

Patients with metastatic breast cancer may not benefit from surgery and radiation after chemotherapy

"There is a small percentage, about 5 to 20 percent of breast cancer patients, who present with metastatic breast cancer when they see their doctors for the first time, and across the globe, the thought is that the local tumor in such events does not require any surgery or radiation [known as loco-regional treatment (LRT)] after chemotherapy, unless there is bleeding or ulceration," said Rajendra Badwe, M.D., director of the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India. "However, there are conflicting results from retrospective analyses, and hence, there was a need for a randomized trial…

Partially blocking blood vessels’ energy source may stop cancer growth, blindness, other conditions

"Our findings reveal a new strategy to block blood vessel growth in various pathological conditions by depriving them of energy and building blocks necessary for growth," says senior author Dr. Peter Carmeliet of the University of Leuven and the Vesalius Research Center, VIB in Belgium. While current strategies to thwart pathological blood vessel formation focus primarily on inhibiting vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), this latest research centers around blocking glycolysis, the process that endothelial cells rely on for generating most of the energy they need to multiply and migrate. …

Personalizing cancer treatments for youngest patients

Precision medicine constitutes a different method of identifying best treatment options for patients. Instead of prescribing therapy based solely on the organ where the cancer originated, clinicians utilize genomic analysis for a more comprehensive approach. Through a rapid gene sequencing test, the tiniest details of a tumor biopsy are uncovered, sometimes revealing one or more mutations in the patient’s genes. It is the mutations themselves that can be targeted with new or existing drugs. …

Novel agent set for unique clinical test in inflammatory breast cancer

The finding, published online this month in the Journal of Experimental Therapeutics and Oncology, has led to development of a phase 1/2 clinical trial at Kimmel Cancer Center to test the agent, Romidepsin (Istodax™), in combination with nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane™) chemotherapy for advanced inflammatory breast cancer (IBC). …

Common outcome measures required for neurofibromatosis clinical trials

The (REiNS) Collaboration was formed to achieve consensus regarding the design of clinical trials for treatments of NF and related disorders, with a focus on developing a standard set of appropriate and meaningful outcome measures. "This supplement presents the initial progress of several of the working groups and includes the first series of consensus recommendations for NF clinical trial endpoints by the REiNS International Collaboration," according to an introduction by Dr Scott R. …

Gene promotes one in a hundred of tumors: Gene discovered to play a part in one per cent of all cancers

The team discovered that, when CUX1 is deactivated, a biological pathway is activated that increases tumour growth. Drugs that inhibit the biological pathway are currently being used in the clinic and are in development thus highlighting a potential new targeted therapy for patients with this type of cancer-causing mutation. …

Scientists accelerate aging in stem cells to study age-related diseases like Parkinson’s

"With current techniques, we would typically have to grow pluripotent stem cell-derived cells for 60 or more years in order to model a late-onset disease," says senior study author Lorenz Studer of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. "Now, with progerin-induced aging, we can accelerate this process down to a period of a few days or weeks. This should greatly simplify the study of many late-onset diseases that are of such great burden to our aging society." Modeling a specific patient’s disease in a dish is possible with iPSC approaches, which involve taking skin cells from patients and reprogramming them to embryonic-like stem cells capable of turning into other disease-relevant cell types like neurons or blood cells. But iPSC-derived cells are immature and often take months to become functional, similar to the slow development of the human embryo. …

Cancer mutation likely trigger of scleroderma

A report on the discovery, published in the Dec. 5 issue of Science, also suggests that a normal immune system is critical for preventing the development of common types of cancer. According to researchers, patients with scleroderma often make immune proteins or antibodies to another protein, called RPC1. These antibodies are believed to cause the organ damage characteristic of the disease, and the reason behind this antibody production has remained unknown…