Tag Archives: health

Cellular signals between pancreatic cancer tumors, saliva

The disease is typically diagnosed through an invasive and complicated biopsy. But a discovery by researchers at the UCLA School of Dentistry may be one major step toward creating a noninvasive tool that would enable clinicians and oncologists to detect pancreatic cancer through a simple risk assessment test using saliva. In a study on a tumor-ridden mouse model, the UCLA researchers were able to definitively validate that pancreatic cancer biomarkers reside in saliva…

New more effective antimicrobials might rise from old

Writing in the October 7 Early Edition of PNAS, Lars Eckmann, MD, professor of medicine, and colleagues describe creating more than 650 new compounds by slightly altering structural elements of metronidazole and other 5-nitromidazoles (5-NI), a half-century-old class of antimicrobial drugs used to combat everything from an ulcer-causing stomach bacterium to a gut-churning protozoan found in contaminated water. "The basic building blocks of 5-NI drugs are the same for all. We decorated around them, adding extra molecular pieces to change their shapes and sizes," said Eckmann, who published the paper with colleagues at UC San Diego, The Scripps Research Institute and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Australia…

Biomarker, potential targeted therapy for pancreatic cancer discovered

These findings, being published in the Oct. 4, 2013, online edition of PLOS ONE, also show that the use of a biotherapy consisting of a lysosomal protein, known as saposin C (SapC), and a phospholipid, known as dioleoylphosphatidylserine (DOPS), can be combined into tiny cavities, or nanovesicles, to target and kill pancreatic cancer cells…

New role for cell dark matter in genome integrity

Each time a cell divides, chromosomes, the long DNA molecules that encode our genes, must be duplicated. But the machinery that does this replication is imperfect, failing to perform duplication all the way to the ends of chromosomes. How living cells divide and how this process is accurately achieved are among the deepest questions scientists have been addressing for decades. …

Cancer biggest killer of Hispanic Texans

The report documents cancer as the leading cause of death among Hispanic Texans under the age of 76. Only three percent of Hispanic Texans are older than 75. Texas’s Hispanic population has more than doubled since 1990. Texans of Hispanic ethnicity now comprise 38 percent of the state’s population…

Genomic differences found in types of cervical cancer

The study, published August 23, 2013 in the online version of the journal Cancer by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), is the first to compare the spectrum of cancer-related gene mutations in the two main subtypes of cervical cancer — adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. In tests on 80 cervical tumor samples, the investigators found high rates of mutations in two genes: PIK3CA and KRAS. While PIK3CA mutations appeared in both subtypes, KRAS mutations were found only in adenocarcinomas. By linking their findings to data on patients’ treatment and survival, researchers found that PIK3CA mutations are associated with a shorter survival period: patients whose tumors carried these mutations lived a median of 67 months after diagnosis compared with 90 months for patients whose tumors lacked the mutations…

New therapeutic agents that may benefit leukemia patients

Reuben Kapur, Ph.D., the Frieda and Albrecht Kipp Professor of Pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, and colleagues discovered in pre-clinical and pharmacological models that cancer cells with a mutation in the KIT receptor — an oncogenic/cancerous form of the receptor — in mast cell leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia can be stopped. Their findings were published online Sept…

Less blood clot risk linked to estradiol than to Premarin pills

"Although oral estrogens are effective for managing menopause symptoms, not enough is known about the cardiovascular safety of different oral hormone therapy products relative to each other," said first author Nicholas L. Smith, PhD. He is a professor of epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health, the director of the Veterans Affairs (VA) Seattle Epidemiologic Research and Information Center (ERIC) at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, and an affiliate investigator at Group Health Research Institute. To further understand the differences in risk, the researchers also measured clotting (coagulation) factors in the blood of women who did not develop a clot. …