Tag Archives: institute

Gene mutation may have effect on benefit of aspirin use for colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that aspirin use reduces the risk of colorectal cancer, according to background information in the article. Experimental evidence has suggested that BRAF-mutant colonic cells might be less sensitive to the antitumor effects of aspirin than BRAF-wild-type (the typical form of a gene as it occurs in nature) neoplastic cells. …

Study sets guidelines for stem cell transplants in older patients with myelodysplastic syndromes

Using mathematical models to analyze hundreds of MDS cases from around the world, the researchers found reduced intensity transplants of donor stem cells are advisable for patients aged 60-70 who have higher-risk forms of MDS that are likely to turn into leukemia in the near future. For patients with lower-risk MDS, non-transplant treatments are preferable, the model indicates…

Helping RNA escape from cells’ recycling process could make it easier to shut off disease-causing genes

A new study from MIT sheds light on the nanoparticles’ fate and suggests new ways to maximize delivery of the RNA strands they are carrying, known as short interfering RNA (siRNA). "We’ve been able to develop nanoparticles that can deliver payloads into cells, but we didn’t really understand how they do it," says Daniel Anderson, the Samuel Goldblith Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. "Once you know how it works, there’s potential that you can tinker with the system and make it work better." Anderson, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, is the leader of a research team that set out to examine how the nanoparticles and their drug payloads are processed at a cellular and subcellular level. Their findings appear in the June 23 issue of Nature Biotechnology. …

Genetic variants predicting aggressive prostate cancers identified

Their study was published in the online journal PLOS ONE in April. According to the authors, prostate cancer accounts for 20 percent of all cancers and 9 percent of cancer deaths. It is the most common cancer and was the second leading cause of cancer death in American men in 2012. "For most prostate cancer patients, the disease progresses relatively slowly," said study co-author Hui-Yi Lin, Ph.D., assistant member of the Chemical Biology and Molecular Medicine Program at Moffitt. …

Pluripotent stem cells made from pancreatic cancer cells are first human model of the cancer’s progression

Still, researchers and clinicians don’t have a non-invasive way to even detect early cells that portent later disease. ‘There’s no PSA test for pancreatic cancer,’ they say, and that’s one of the main reasons why pancreatic cancer is detected so late in its course. They have been searching for a human-cell model of early-disease progression…

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…