Tag Archives: drug

Promising anti-cancer activity in experimental drug: Next-gen melanoma drug, TAK-733, excels in lab tests

“The importance of this molecule is that it’s a next-generation and highly potent inhibitor of a known melanoma pathway. It was highly effective against melanoma and the method of our study — using patient-derived tumor samples grown in mice — makes us especially optimistic that we should see similar results in the human disease,” says John Tentler, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center, associate professor at CU School of Medicine and one of the paper’s lead authors…

Bone drug should be seen in a new light for its anti-cancer properties — ScienceDaily

Several clinical trials – where women with breast cancer were given these drugs (bisphosphonates) alongside normal treatment for early-stage disease – showed that they can confer a ‘survival advantage’ and inhibit cancer spread in some women, although until now no-one has understood why. A new study by Professor Mike Rogers, Dr Tri Phan and Dr Simon Junankar from Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research has used sophisticated imaging technologies to reveal that bisphosphonates attach to tiny calcifications in tumours in mice. These calcium-drug complexes are then devoured by ‘macrophages’, immune cells that the cancer hijacks early in its development to conceal its existence. The study, which includes remarkable movies of the entire process described above, is published in the journal Cancer Discovery, now online…

Bone drug should be seen in a new light for its anti-cancer properties

Anti-cancer drug effective against common stem cell transplant complication

“Bortezomib helped a group of patients who desperately needed a treatment, having failed multiple different therapies,” said UC Davis hematologist and associate professor Mehrdad Abedi, lead author on the paper. “The drug fights chronic graft-versus host disease, and unlike other GVHD therapies such as steroid, cyclosporine or mycophenolate, it treats chronic GVHD without dampening the graft-versus-tumor effect, which can be critically important to help patients avoid relapse. In fact, because bortezomib is an anti-cancer drug, it potentially attacks cancer cells in its own right.” The trial results were published in October in the journal Blood. Chronic GVHD strikes patients who have received stem cell transplants from donors, commonly called allogeneic transplants. …

Why targeted drug doesn’t benefit patients with early-stage lung cancer

Oncologists use erlotinib to treat lung cancers that have a mutation in a gene called epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). The gene mutation causes EGFR to run like it has a stuck accelerator, and erlotinib blocks the overactive molecule. The study shows that while erlotinib effectively causes tumors to shrink — suggesting that the drug is helping — this drug also increases the aggressiveness of the tumor so that growth is accelerated when therapy ends. This study finds that this is due to a secondary and previously unknown effect of inhibiting EGFR…

Highly effective new anti-cancer drug shows few side effects in mice

When taken by mouth, the drug was well tolerated with limited toxicity. An intravenous form, delivered within a liposome, was just as effective with fewer side effects. Both approaches — described in the October 22, 2014 issue of Science Translational Medicine — led to complete regression of transplanted tumors. …

Nanoparticle-based invention moves new drugs closer to clinical testing

Delivering cancer drugs directly to tumors is difficult. Scientists are working on new approaches to overcome the natural limitations of drugs, including loading them into nanoparticles. “The drug is packaged into a lipid ball significantly smaller than the width of a hair to make it soluble in the blood stream and prevent negative side effects. The drug-containing nanoparticle ball then travels in the bloodstream to the tumor, where it accumulates and the drug is released in the tumor to kill the cancer cells,” said Gavin Robertson, professor of pharmacology, pathology, dermatology, and surgery and director of the Penn State Hershey Melanoma Center. …

Selenium effective treatment against breast cancer, study suggests

Julian Spallholz, a professor of nutritional sciences at Texas Tech University, has studied the effects of selenium on several types of cancer. His research on attaching selenium to the leading clinical chemotherapeutic monoclonal antibody for a type of breast cancer shows it can more effectively kill the cancer cells, he reports. About 20 percent of breast cancer patients have overexpressed growth receptors, known as Her2+ receptors, on the cancer cells, which cause uncontrolled tumor growth…

Prostate cancer’s penchant for copper may be a fatal flaw

Researchers at Duke Medicine have found a way to kill prostate cancer cells by delivering a trove of copper along with a drug that selectively destroys the diseased cells brimming with the mineral, leaving non-cancer cells healthy. The combination approach, which uses two drugs already commercially available for other uses, could soon be tested in clinical trials among patients with late-stage disease. …

Oral drug reduces formation of precancerous polyps in colon

The study is featured on the cover of the current issue of Cancer Research; it was published online ahead of print in September. The journal’s editors characterized the study’s findings as “striking.” Inflammatory cells in the colon, or polyps, are very common after the age of 50. The average 60-year-old has an estimated 25 percent chance of having polyps. Most polyps are benign, but some will develop into colon cancer. …