Tag Archives: gene

Genetic signature of deadly brain cancer identified

"This study identifies a core set of genes and pathways that are dysregulated during both the early and late stages of tumor progression," said University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) neurologist Steven Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., the senior author of the study and co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine. "By virtue of their marked difference from normal cells, these genes appear to comprise a promising set of targets for therapeutic intervention." As its name implies, gliomas arise from a cell type found in the central nervous system called the glial cell. Gliomas progress in severity over time and ultimately become highly invasive tumors known as glioblastomas, which are difficult to treat and almost invariably fatal. …

Targeted therapy boosts lung cancer outcomes

In a trial involving patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumor cells harbored an abnormal ALK gene, those who received the oral drug crizotinib, which acts directly on ALK, went a median time of 7.7 months before their disease began to worsen, compared to 3 months for patients who received traditional chemotherapy. Patients treated with crizotinib also had a better quality of life than those treated with standard chemotherapy. The findings will be released as an advanced online publication by the New England Journal of Medicine on June 1. …

Changing cancer’s environment to halt its spread

The study team, led by Randolph Watnick, PhD, at Boston Children’s Hospital, Vivek Mittal, PhD, at Weill Cornell Medical College and Lars Akslen, MD, PhD, at the University of Bergen, released their findings in the May issue of the journal Cancer Discovery. The main cause of cancer mortality is not the primary tumor itself, but rather its spread — metastasis — to other locations in the body and subsequent organ failure. Previous studies by Watnick, a member of Boston Children’s Vascular Biology Program, and others have shown that tumors capable of metastasis release proteins that help prepare new homes in distant organs for their metastatic progeny. …

New factor to control oncogene-induced senescence discovered

The researchers who participated in this international research are: Marta Cascante and Vitaly Selivanov, from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Biology of the UB and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB), affiliated to the campus of International excellence Barcelona Knowledge Campus (BKC) ; Liang Zheng and Eyal Gottlieb, from Beatson Institute for Cancer Research (Scotland), and Joanna Kaplon and Daniel S. Peeper, from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, among other experts. Cellular senescence: a ‘brake’ to cell division Cellular senescence, formally described more than four decades ago by Paul Moorhead and Leonard Hayflick, is a tumour suppression mechanism which limits cell’s ability to proliferate. This process works as a ‘brake’ for tumour genesis and can be an answer to several factors (oncogene, oxidative stress, telomere alterations, etc.) Professor Marta Cascante, head of the Consolidated Research Group on Integrative Systems Biology, Metabolomics and Cancer of the UB honoured with the ICREA Academia Award 2010, explains that "as a response to an oncogene mutation, cell can activate its protection mechanisms and get into a phase so-called ‘oncogene-induced senescence’ which acts as a key tumour suppressive mechanism. …

Molecular marker from pancreatic ‘juices’ helps identify pancreatic cancer

"Many researchers have been working on such a diagnostic test for a long time — for me, it has been 20 years," says lead investigator Massimo Raimondo, M.D., a gastroenterologist at Mayo Clinic in Florida. "But for the first time, we have found a very strong candidate molecular marker. "We all want a foolproof method to detect pancreatic cancer in our patients so that we can deliver appropriate therapy, as soon as possible," Dr. …

Genetic diversity within tumors predicts outcome in head and neck cancer

"Our findings will eventually allow better matching of treatments to individual patients, based on this characteristic of their tumors," says Edmund Mroz, PhD, of the MGH Center for Cancer Research, lead author of the Cancer report. "This method of measuring heterogeneity can be applied to most types of cancer, so our work should help researchers determine whether a similar relationship between heterogeneity and outcome occurs in other tumors." For decades investigators have hypothesized that tumors with a high degree of genetic heterogeneity — the result of different subgroups of cells undergoing different mutations at different DNA sites — would be more difficult to treat because particular subgroups might be more likely to survive a particular drug or radiation or to have spread before diagnosis. While recent studies have identified specific genes and proteins that can confer treatment resistance in tumors, there previously has been no way of conveniently measuring tumor heterogeneity. …

Bionimbus protected data cloud to enable researchers to analyze cancer data

The Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud, as it is called, enables researchers who are authorized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to access and analyze data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) without having to set up secure, compliant computing environments capable of managing and analyzing terabytes of data, download the data — which can take weeks — and then install the appropriate tools needed to perform the desired analyses. Using technology that was developed in part by the Open Science Data Cloud, a National Science Foundation-supported project that is developing cloud infrastructure for large scientific datasets, the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud provides researchers with a more cost- and time-effective mechanism to extract knowledge from massive amounts of data. Drawing insights from big data is imperative for addressing some of today’s most vexing environmental, health and safety challenges. …

When it comes to cancer, information is power

Noreen asked me to fill in for her today.  Don't worry, she has actually been feeling better this past week.  She got to take a break from chemo, which always makes her feel better, and she learned her tumor markers dropped from 600 to 53!  We are very excited about that bit of news. The reason I am writing this week is because there has been a lot of attention given to the announcement by Angelina Jolie that she underwent a preventative double mastectomy with reconstruction when she learned she had the BRCA (BReast CAncer ) gene.   I, too, had the surgery after testing positive for the gene.  People, myself included, were stunned by Angelina's announcement.  When one of the most famous and arguably beautiful women in the world has a preventative mastectomy, it sheds a spotlight on the issue and reminds us that not even fame and fortune can save us from cancer.   Since Angelina “came out,” breast cancer advocates, doctors, news commentators and others have given their opinions on whether or not Angelina and other women with the breast cancer gene and/or breast cancer have made the “right” decision by having a double mastectomy. But there is no “right” or “wrong” in these situations.  No one wants a mastectomy . . . no one.  Women (and some men) choose the long, painful and disfiguring surgery to either remove cancer from their bodies or to try and prevent it when they have a greatly increased risk of getting breast cancer.    Angelina and I had an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer.  Eighty-seven percent! You have all followed Noreen's blogs.  She is one of my closest friends.  When I compared having a mastectomy to what she has endured, for me, a mastectomy felt like the better option.   Still, the message I want to send is that surgery is not the only option for women who have the breast cancer gene or otherwise have an increased risk. The important thing is that you don't keep your head in the sand.  Information is power.  You should talk to your health care provider and determine whether you are at an increased risk.   If testing for the breast cancer gene is recommended, just remember your life won't change if you find out you have it; you just have more information so you can explore more options.   Surgery is just one option.  Women at high risk are also eligible for increased screenings, which could help “catch” cancer early and give you a fighting chance if you do develop the disease.   Like I said, there is no right or wrong answer, but when you have all of the information, you can determine what option is best for you.     Noreen will be back next week.  Until then, keep up with her on Facebook    Michelle McBride is the President of the Noreen Fraser Foundation.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/15/when-it-comes-to-cancer-information-is-power/

Study IDs key protein for cell death

When cells suffer too much DNA damage, they are usually forced to undergo programmed cell death, or apoptosis. However, cancer cells often ignore these signals, flourishing even after chemotherapy drugs have ravaged their DNA. A new finding from MIT researchers may offer a way to overcome that resistance: The team has identified a key protein involved in an alternative death pathway known as programmed necrosis. …