Tag Archives: hutchinson

Chest radiation to treat childhood cancer increases patients’ risk of breast cancer — ScienceDaily

Wilms tumor is a rare childhood kidney cancer that can spread to the lungs. When this spread occurs, patients receive a relatively low dose of 12-14 Gray of radiation therapy to the entire chest. To see if such exposure to radiation affects patients’ risk of developing breast cancer, Norman Breslow, PhD, of the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, led a team that studied nearly 2500 young women who had been treated for Wilms tumor during childhood and who had survived until at least 15 years of age…

Chest radiation to treat childhood cancer increases patients’ risk of breast cancer

Wilms tumor is a rare childhood kidney cancer that can spread to the lungs. When this spread occurs, patients receive a relatively low dose of 12-14 Gray of radiation therapy to the entire chest. To see if such exposure to radiation affects patients’ risk of developing breast cancer, Norman Breslow, PhD, of the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, led a team that studied nearly 2500 young women who had been treated for Wilms tumor during childhood and who had survived until at least 15 years of age. …

Droplet Digital PCR enables reproducible quantification of microRNA biomarkers

"In the field of circulating microRNA diagnostics, droplet digital PCR enables us to finally perform biomarker studies in which the measurements are directly comparable across days within a laboratory and even among different laboratories," said Dr. Muneesh Tewari, Associate Member in the Human Biology Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and lead author of the study. Challenges in miRNA quantification miRNAs are small regulatory RNA molecules with diverse cellular functions. The human genome may encode over 1,000 miRNAs, which could target about 60 percent of mammalian genes. …

Aspirin may fight cancer by slowing DNA damage

"Aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which are commonly available and cost-effective medications, may exert cancer-preventing effects by lowering mutation rates," said Carlo Maley, PhD, a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and an expert on how cancers evolve in the body over time. In the study, published June 13 in the online journal PLOS Genetics, Maley, working with gastroenterologist and geneticist Brian Reid, MD, PhD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, analyzed biopsy samples from 13 patients with a pre-cancerous condition called Barrett’s esophagus who were tracked for six to 19 years. In an "observational crossover" study design, some patients started out taking daily aspirin for several years, and then stopped, while others started taking aspirin for the first time during observation…