Tag Archives: institute

Can celebrity cancer diagnoses prompt quitting smoking?

In a study published this week in Preventive Medicine, researchers from San Diego State University, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of North Carolina and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that when celebrities publicly discuss their struggles with cancer diagnoses, the resulting media coverage prompts more smokers to search for information on quitting than events like New Year’s Day or World No Tobacco Day. Public health experts have long known these discussions spur others to get screened for cancer or consider the same treatments, but it was unclear whether these discussions also promoted cancer prevention behaviors, like quitting smoking. This question has evaded study because the method most commonly used to assess cancer-related behaviors — annual telephone surveys — isn’t fine-grained enough to tell researchers which events are influencing respondents’ answers. …

Potential of protein-measurement technique to standardize quantification of entire human proteome

The study, to be published Dec. 8 online in the journal Nature Methods, shows that the scientists’ targeted protein-detection approach has the potential to systematically and reliably measure the entire human repertoire of proteins, known as the proteome. …

Group of anti-diabetic drugs can lower cancer risk in women with type 2 diabetes

People with type 2 diabetes have a higher rate of cancer development and recurrence compared to the general population. This study — published online by the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism — shows that widely prescribed anti-diabetes drugs can be linked to either an increased or decreased risk of cancer, depending on the type of medication prescribed. A team of researchers led by Sangeeta Kashyap, M.D., an endocrinologist and associate professor of medicine at Cleveland Clinic’s Endocrinology & Metabolism Institute, compared two groups of drugs commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes — insulin sensitizers and insulin secretagogues…

Gene promotes one in a hundred of tumors: Gene discovered to play a part in one per cent of all cancers

The team discovered that, when CUX1 is deactivated, a biological pathway is activated that increases tumour growth. Drugs that inhibit the biological pathway are currently being used in the clinic and are in development thus highlighting a potential new targeted therapy for patients with this type of cancer-causing mutation. …

International gene therapy trial for ‘bubble boy’ disease shows promising early results

Eight of the nine boys registered to date in the new trial are alive and well, with functioning immune systems and free of infections associated with SCID-X1, between nine and 36 months following treatment, according to Sung-Yun Pai, MD, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist from Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. …

Cigarette smoking after cancer diagnosis increases risk of death

Compared with men who did not smoke after a cancer diagnosis, those who smoked after diagnosis had a 59 percent increase in risk of death from all causes, after adjusting for factors including age, cancer site, and treatment type. When limited to men who were smokers at diagnosis, those who continued smoking after diagnosis had a 76 percent increase in risk of death from all causes compared with those who quit smoking after a diagnosis…

Decreased diversity of bacteria microbiome in gut associated colorectal cancer

Previous studies suggest a role for the gut microbiota in colorectal cancer (CRC), but comprehensive epidemiological studies comparing samples from case and control subjects that also consider potential confounders and adjust for multiple comparisons inherently involved in microbiome analysis have not been reported. Jiyoung Ahn, Ph.D., from Department of Population Health at New York University School of Medicine in New York, NY, and colleagues compared samples and data from participants enrolled in a case-control study…

Cancer mutation likely trigger of scleroderma

A report on the discovery, published in the Dec. 5 issue of Science, also suggests that a normal immune system is critical for preventing the development of common types of cancer. According to researchers, patients with scleroderma often make immune proteins or antibodies to another protein, called RPC1. These antibodies are believed to cause the organ damage characteristic of the disease, and the reason behind this antibody production has remained unknown…

Protein in prostate biopsies signals increased cancer risk

Their findings, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, are the first to quantify, in the setting of a clinical trial, the increased risk of prostate cancer development from the protein ERG. Traditional means of determining risk of prostate cancer — blood tests for the protein prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and biopsies — do not always correlate well with the chances of dying from the disease. Decisions on what to do with the results of these tests can be unclear, leaving doctors and patients frustrated and unsure of how to proceed. …