Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive cancer with poor prognosis and limited treatment options and is highly resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. But researchers believe they have found an effective strategy for selectively killing pancreatic cancer while sparing healthy cells which could make treatment more effective. …
A new research review co-authored by a UCLA professor provides one of the most comprehensive assessments to date of research on nanomedicine-based approaches to treating cancer and offers insight into how researchers can best position nanomedicine-based cancer treatments for FDA approval. …
Breast cancer risk rises in postmenopausal women as their body mass index climbs. The study found eating a diet high in tomatoes had a positive effect on the level of hormones that play a role in regulating fat and sugar metabolism. "The advantages of eating plenty of tomatoes and tomato-based products, even for a short period, were clearly evident in our findings," said the study’s first author, Adana Llanos, PhD, MPH, who is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Rutgers University. Llanos completed the research while she was a postdoctoral fellow with Electra Paskett, PhD, at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. …
Sophisticated computer modelling could be used to slowly move the table — known as a couch — and a radiation source in three dimensions to direct radiation precisely to the patient’s tumor, researchers have suggested. At the moment, a radiotherapy table can be angled during treatment, but there is no way to synchronise its rotation with a moving radiation beam. But with some modifications, an upgraded system could move both the patient and the beam while reducing the radiation dose of healthy tissue…
The transplanted tumors maintain the genetic errors that caused the original cancer, even though they are growing in mice. …
About 80 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States each year have tumors with high levels of hormone receptors. These tumors are fueled by the hormone estrogen. Anastrozole is a drug that prevents the body from making estrogen, and it has been used to treat postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer for more than 10 years. "We initiated the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study II (IBIS-II) Prevention trial to investigate whether anastrozole can be used effectively to prevent breast cancer," said Jack Cuzick, Ph.D., chairman of the IBIS-II Steering Committee. …
Researchers from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice report that savings may be found in accountable care organizations (ACO) through reductions in hospitalizations. The analysis published in the December issue of the journal Healthcare provides the first empirical evidence on how the shared savings ACO model may affect the cost and experience of care for cancer patients. The researchers looked at the Physician Group Practice Demonstration, which ran from 2005 to 2010 in 10 physician groups, for the best current evidence on the likely effectiveness of accountable care organizations for Medicare beneficiaries…
"The prevalence of these symptoms accounts for a huge variance in physical, mental and social domains of quality of life among survivors," said I-Chan Huang, Ph.D., an associate professor of health outcomes and policy in the UF College of Medicine and the lead author of the study. "If we think symptoms are the key to patients’ quality of life, then if we can better manage their symptoms, we can improve their daily functional status and quality of life." Huang, also a member of UF’s Institute for Child Health Policy, teamed with researchers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis to conduct the study, which was published in the Nov. 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology…
The researchers published their findings, "Silencing of RB1 and RB2/p130 during adipogenesis of bone marrow stromal cells results in dysregulated differentiation," in the Feb. 1, 2014, issue (online Nov. 25) of the journal Cell Cycle…
Precision medicine constitutes a different method of identifying best treatment options for patients. Instead of prescribing therapy based solely on the organ where the cancer originated, clinicians utilize genomic analysis for a more comprehensive approach. Through a rapid gene sequencing test, the tiniest details of a tumor biopsy are uncovered, sometimes revealing one or more mutations in the patient’s genes. It is the mutations themselves that can be targeted with new or existing drugs. …