Tag Archives: institute

More than skin deep: New layer to the body’s fight against infection

The single cell type that was thought to be behind the skin’s immune defense has been found to have a doppelganger, with researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute showing the cells, despite appearing identical, are actually two different types. Institute scientists Dr Michael Chopin, Dr Stephen Nutt and colleagues from the institute’s Molecular Immunology division have been investigating Langerhans cells, the immune cells that provide the first line of defense against attacks through the skin. Until recently, scientists believed that, because they looked identical, all Langerhans cells were also genetically identical and had the same function…

Scientists fingerprint single cancer cells to map cancer’s family tree

The technique can identify the founding mutations from which a tumour evolved and then uses computer software to draw a map of the cancer’s family tree. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute used DNA sequencing to identify a panel of mutations present across thousands of cancer cells in three patients with leukaemia…

Study improves detection of biomarkers to predict lung cancer

One of the biggest challenges in oncological medicine is to detect lung cancer earlier enough to allow treatment because now the location of these tumors implies a metastasis in about 75% of cases. This research has confirmed that the presence of a protein called C4d "is associated with a mortality increase of people whose tumors contain it, and also the levels of this marker are reduced after surgical removal of the cancer," said Carlos Camps, also a researcher of the University General Hospital of Valencia Research Foundation. This protein "may be a biomarker for early detection and treatment of lung cancer because it would diagnose those people at increased risk for this disease, but no symptoms," adds the scientist Eloisa Jantus- Lewintre, co-author of the work and belonging to General Hospital Foundation…

Novel study charts aggressive prostate cancer

Investigators in the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute have made extensive progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms of disease progression. These results may help scientists better understand the prognosis of patients diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. The study, published in the journal Cell Cycle and led by Dolores Di Vizio, MD, PhD, may ultimately lead to the development of new biomarkers for not only prognosis, but also a patient’s potential response to therapy. "One of the long-standing difficulties in treating men with advanced prostate cancer has been predicting the response to given therapies or treatments," said Di Vizio, associate professor in the Department of Surgery, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Department of Biomedical Sciences. …

New research to help care for breast cancer patients in their homes

Senior Research Fellow Dr Collin Sones and Professor Rob Eason are working with colleagues from Medicine and the Institute of Life Sciences — Dr Spiros Garbis, Professor Peter Smith and Professor Saul Faust — to develop laser-printed paper-based sensors that can be used to detect biomarkers in cancer patients and see how they are responding to their chemotherapy treatment. …

Tipping the balance between senescence, proliferation

In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Abdul Mondal and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute evaluated the expression of these two p53 isoforms in T lymphocytes from healthy donors and donors with lung cancer. In healthy patients, the authors observed an age dependent accumulation of senescent cells and that these cells had an increase in p53β compared to Δ133p53. In lung tumor-associated cells, there was a higher level of the Δ133p53 isoform. …

Sofrito contains substances that reduce risk of cardiovascular disease

The study, PREvention with a MEDiterranean Diet (PREDIMED) has recently shown the link between the Mediterranean diet and low levels of cardiovascular disease. The questionnaire used as a reference asked consumers how often they ate vegetables, pasta, rice and other dishes made with sofrito, but the beneficial compounds of this product had never been analysed. Now researchers from the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Biomedical Research Centres Network — Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn) of the Carlos III Health Institute, have for the first time identified polyphenols and carotenoids -healthy antioxidant substances- in sofrito, by using a high resolution mass spectrometry technique. The results have been published in the ‘Food Chemistry’ magazine and they show the presence of at least 40 types of polyphenols. …

New function of two molecules involved in metastasis

Transcription factors are proteins that regulate gene expression. They activate or deactivate a gene’s function. Researchers at IMIM have studied the function of one of these transcription factors, Snail1, in mouse cells during the Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT). Sandra Peiró, a researcher from the IMIM Research Group on Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition and Tumor Progression explains: "EMT is a process consisting of converting epithelial cells, the ones covering the internal and external surfaces of the body, into what are known as mesenchymal cells. …

Low-intensity therapy for Burkitt lymphoma highly effective

Burkitt lymphoma is the most aggressive type of lymphoma, which is a cancer that begins in cells of the immune system. It is more common in equatorial Africa than in Western countries. In Uganda, for example, the estimated prevalence of Burkitt lymphoma is between 5 and 20 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, whereas in the United States, according to NCI’s statistical database for 2001-2009, prevalence was 0.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants…

Experimental regimen tested for small cell lung cancer

Small cell lung cancer, which includes oat cell carcinoma, is a more aggressive disease than other types of lung cancer and often is more advanced at the time of diagnosis. Smoking is the most common cause of the diagnosis and can be diagnosed even decades after an individual has quit. At advanced stages of the disease, it is incurable in the vast majority of patients, with a median survival less than 12 months. Mita said that following a diagnosis of small cell lung cancer, most patients opt for immediate chemotherapy using the standard-of-care chemotherapy’s etoposide and cisplatin — two drugs developed more than three decades ago…