Tag Archives: hamilton

Hormone loss could be involved in colon cancer

The researchers at Thomas Jefferson University examined colon cancer samples from 281 patients and compared those tissues to nearby colon tissue that wasn’t cancerous. They found that guanylin production — measured by number of messenger RNAs for guanylin contained in each cell — decreased 100 to 1,000 times in more than 85 percent of colon cancers tested. They verified their results by also staining for the guanylin hormone production in slices of the tissue samples. …

Simple blood test could be used as tool for early cancer diagnosis

A simple blood test could identify those with hypercalcaemia, prompting doctors to investigate further. The research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, analysed the electronic records of 54,000 patients who had elevated levels of calcium and looked at how many of them went on to receive a cancer diagnosis. Dr Fergus Hamilton, who led the research from the Centre for Academic Primary Care at the University of Bristol, said: “All previous studies on hypercalcaemia and cancer had been carried out with patients who had already been diagnosed with cancer — hypercalcaemia was seen as a late effect of the cancer. “We wanted to look at the issue from a different perspective and find out if high calcium levels in blood could be used as an early indicator of cancer and therefore in the diagnosis of cancer.” Analysis of the data from 54,000 patients found that in men, even mild hypercalcaemia (2.6-2.8 mmol l−1) conferred a risk of cancer in one year of 11.5 per cent. …

Gobbling up poison: Method for killing colon cancer

Now researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have discovered the unique biological properties inherent to colon cancer that make it a perfect candidate for immunotoxins — an antibody that won’t attach to normal cells and a toxin-delivery system that takes advantage of a fluke of biology: Colon cancer cells will gobble up poison if it’s attached to a key receptor on the cell’s surface. Indeed, the researchers demonstrated that the novel immunotoxin they created could reduce the lung metastasis in mice, which had grown out from colon cancers, by more than 80 percent with only 6 doses, in research published September 8th, 2014 in the journal Oncotarget. “These studies pave the way for effective antibody-directed therapy for metastatic disease in colorectal cancer, which currently carries a greater than 90 percent chance of mortality” says Scott Waldman, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics and the Samuel MV Hamilton Professor at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr…

Your immune system: On surveillance in the war against cancer

"We know that one function of our immune system is to detect and destroy pre-malignant cells before they can become cancer," said lead author Lance D. Miller, Ph.D., associate professor of cancer biology at Wake Forest Baptist. "However, sometimes the immune system becomes unresponsive to the presence of these cells and a tumor develops." This unresponsiveness can be temporary, and the immune system can remain alerted to the fact that there’s a problem. Immune cells can stand post along the borders of the tumor and even infiltrate the tumor core, where they may gain a better position for eventual attack. …