Tag Archives: israel

Carbon monoxide may help shrink tumors, amplify effectiveness of chemotherapy

The surprising new findings, described in the December issue of the journal Cancer Research, show that in cell culture and animal models carbon monoxide (CO) can both prevent tumor growth in prostate and lung cancers and can amplify the effectiveness of chemotherapy 1,000-fold — while sparing noncancerous tissue from chemo’s sometimes debilitating side effects. "We found that in small, carefully controlled doses, CO not only mimicked the effects of chemotherapy agents by blocking proliferation of cancer cells, but also amplified the toxic effects of the chemotherapy drugs doxorubicin and camptothecin to accelerate cancer cell death," says senior author Leo Otterbein, PhD, an investigator in the Transplant Institute in BIDMC’s Department of Surgery and Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. "Importantly and rather unique is that CO also helped to protect normal tissue from chemotherapy, which is an unfortunate side effect of the treatments." The new discovery appears to hinge on CO’s ability to switch the metabolic state of cancer cells so that tumors essentially work themselves to death…

Untreated cancer pain a ‘scandal of global proportions,’ survey shows

The results from the Global Opioid Policy Initiative (GOPI) project show that more than 4 billion people live in countries where regulations leave cancer patients suffering excruciating pain. National governments must take urgent action to improve access to these medicines, says the European Society for Medical Oncology, leader of a group of 22 partners that have launched the first global survey to evaluate the availability and accessibility of opioids for cancer pain management. "The GOPI study has uncovered a pandemic of over-regulation in much of the developing world that is making it catastrophically difficult to provide basic medication to relieve strong cancer pain," says Nathan Cherny, Chair of the ESMO Palliative Care Working Group and lead author of the report, from Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel. "Most of the world’s population lacks the necessary access to opioids for cancer pain management and palliative care, as well as acute, post-operative, obstetric and chronic pain." "When one considers that effective treatments are cheap and available, untreated cancer pain and its horrendous consequences for patients and their families is a scandal of global proportions," Cherny says…

Adolescent’s weight, socioeconomic status may affect cancer later in life

Zohar Levi, MD, MHA, of the Rabin Medical Center in Israel, and his colleagues measured body mass index in one million Israeli adolescent males who underwent a general health examination at an average age of 17 years from 1967 to 2005, and through the country’s cancer registry, identified which of the participants later developed cancer. Participants were followed from 2.5 to almost 40 years, with an average follow-up of 18.8 years. The researchers were amazed to find that events — particularly weight and socioeconomic status — up to the age of 17 years had a tremendous impact upon cancer development later in life. …

New insights into the ribosome; important implications for disease

But in recent years, it has been demonstrated that the ribosome is far more than just a processing unit; indeed, current research points to an important role for this complex structure in actively regulating biological processes. Now, in a first-of-its-kind study that broadly examines the composition of the riboproteome, a scientific team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) reveals previously unappreciated components of the ribosome, uncovering a large and dynamic structure that, among other things, can be altered in cancer. Published in today’s on-line issue of the journal Cell Reports, the study additionally describes the development of an analytic platform that can be widely applied to numerous biological systems to highlight the functional roles of possible disease genes associated with the riboproteome. "A primary goal of our lab is to gain a better understanding of translation and its impact on cancer," explains senior author Pier Paolo Pandolfi, MD, PhD, Scientific Director of the Cancer Center at BIDMC and George C…

Promising new direction for organ regeneration and tissue repair

Now a research team led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center has identified an entirely new approach to enhance normal tissue growth, a finding that could have widespread therapeutic applications. Their findings were published on-line this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Tissue regeneration is a process that is not fully understood, but previous research has demonstrated that endothelial cells lining the insides of small blood vessels play a key role in tissue growth. …

Learning from a virus: Keeping genes under wraps

The discoveries improve the chances of developing more targeted therapies in place of existing drugs, which do not always work or come with side effects. Experts estimate that 60 to 90 percent of the world’s population carry the human cytomegalovirus, or CMV, which is one of the eight herpes viruses that infect humans…