Tag Archives: health

New method for non-invasive prostate cancer screening — ScienceDaily

Now a team of researchers led by Shaoxin Li at Guangdong Medical College in China has demonstrated the potential of a new, non-invasive method to screen for prostate cancer, a common type of cancer in men worldwide. They describe their laboratory success testing an existing spectroscopy technique called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with a new, sophisticated analysis technique called support vector machine (SVM)…

Sorting cells with sound waves

Separating cells with sound offers a gentler alternative to existing cell-sorting technologies, which require tagging the cells with chemicals or exposing them to stronger mechanical forces that may damage them. “Acoustic pressure is very mild and much smaller in terms of forces and disturbance to the cell. …

RNA sequence could help doctors to tailor unique prostate cancer treatment programs

Colin Collins and Alexander Wyatt, and other researchers from the Vancouver Prostate Centre at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, matched 25 patients’ treatment outcomes with the RNA sequence of their prostate cancer tumors. They suggest that similarities between the RNA of some of the patients’ tumors could open up new avenues of treatment. Prostate cancer is the fourth most common cancer worldwide, but can be effectively managed. …

RNA sequence could help doctors to tailor unique prostate cancer treatment programs — ScienceDaily

Colin Collins and Alexander Wyatt, and other researchers from the Vancouver Prostate Centre at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, matched 25 patients’ treatment outcomes with the RNA sequence of their prostate cancer tumors. They suggest that similarities between the RNA of some of the patients’ tumors could open up new avenues of treatment. Prostate cancer is the fourth most common cancer worldwide, but can be effectively managed…

Finding keys to glioblastoma therapeutic resistance

“There is a growing interest to guide cancer therapy by sequencing the DNA of the cancer cell,” said Clark Chen, MD, PhD, vice-chairman of Research and Academic Development, UC San Diego Division of Neurosurgery and the principal investigator of the study. “Our study demonstrates that the sensitivity of glioblastoma to a drug is influenced not only by the content of its DNA sequences, but also by how the DNA sequences are organized and interpreted by the cell.” The team of scientists, led by Chen, used a method called comparative gene signature analysis to study the genetic profiles of tumor specimens collected from approximately 900 glioblastoma patients. …

Medicaid reimbursements may affect cancer screening rates among beneficiaries

Although Medicaid is a joint state-federal government health insurance program, each state sets the policies for its own Medicaid program within requirements set by the federal government. This includes setting how much providers are paid for health care services and who is allowed to enroll in Medicaid. To determine whether state Medicaid eligibility and reimbursement policies affect receipt of breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening among Medicaid beneficiaries, Michael Halpern, MD, PhD, MPH, of RTI International, and his colleagues analyzed 2007 Medicaid data from 46 states and Washington DC…

Sequence of rare kidney cancer reveals unique alterations involving telomerase

The collaboration, a project of the National Institutes of Health’s Cancer Genome Atlas initiative, completed the sequence of chromophobe renal cell carcinoma and published the results today in the journal Cancer Cell. “The Cancer Genome Atlas is a federally funded national effort that has already completed the sequence of many major types of cancer (breast, lung, ovarian, for example), but this project is now branching out to sequence more rare types of cancer,” said Dr. …