Tag Archives: institute

Scientists learn more about rare skin cancer that killed Bob Marley

Cancer Research UK scientists have discovered that acral melanomas — the rare type of skin cancer that caused reggae musician Bob Marley’s death — are genetically distinct from other more common types of skin cancer, according to a study published in the journal Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research. Acral melanoma most often affects the palms of the hands, soles of the feet, nail-beds and other hairless parts of the skin. Unlike other more common types of melanoma, it’s not caused by UV damage from the sun. The team, from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute at The University of Manchester, sequenced the tumours of five patients with acral melanoma and combined this with data from three other patients. …

Novel gene predicts both breast cancer relapse, response to chemotherapy

Despite advancements in cancer treatment, breast cancer remains the most common cancer among Singapore women. Thirty percent of early breast cancer patients in the world experience relapse due to metastasis, or the spread of cancer cells to other organs in the body. Some patients also do not respond well to chemotherapy…

RNA combination therapy for lung cancer offers promise for personalized medicine

This week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT now report that they have successfully delivered small RNA therapies in a clinically relevant mouse model of lung cancer to slow and shrink tumor growth. Their research offers promise for personalized RNA combination therapies to improve therapeutic response. …

Leukemia: Scientists make major breakthrough in understanding disease

The study was conducted amongst children with Down’s syndrome — who are 20-50 times more prone to childhood leukemias than other children — and involved analysing the DNA sequence of patients at different stages of leukemia. The researchers uncovered that two key genes (called RAS and JAK) can mutate to turn normal blood cells into cancer cells. However, these two genes never mutate together, as one seems to exclude the other. This discovery means we can begin to identify which of the two genes are mutated in patients, and therefore more effectively target their cancer in lower doses (reducing toxicity for the patient) with less side-effects…

Imaging system guides brain tumor removal to improve patient outcomes

The imaging system is known as desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI MS). The technique was developed by R. Graham Cooks, Ph.D., at Purdue University, and the brain study was done with collaborators at Harvard Medical School and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and is described in the June 30 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. DESI MS promises to be a significant improvement over the current method of distinguishing brain tumor tissue from healthy tissue, which relies on an extremely lengthy and difficult procedure for surgeons and patients…