The study was led by Dr. Jordan Karlitz, Division of Gastroenterology at Tulane University School of Medicine who is also adjunct faculty at the LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health, Dr. Xiao-Cheng Wu, Professor of Public Health and Director of the LSU Health New Orleans Louisiana Tumor Registry, Dr…
Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology led the work, published in the journal Cell, in collaboration with researchers at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s been known for decades that cancer cells use energy differently than most cell types,” said senior author David Scadden, MD. “So we thought, maybe there are metabolism differences between blood stem cells and their immediate descendants; and are they so different from cancer that you might able to manipulate energy sources with something that could have an effect on cancer and not harm normal cells?” Scadden’s team began by examining blood stem cells and their direct offspring — blood progenitor cells that have a more limited ability to differentiate. The researchers modified the way the cells take up nutrients in two ways: via a glucose (sugar) on-off switch, and through subtle adjustments that raise or lower glucose, like a volume dial. …
The impact of soy consumption on breast cancer prevention and treatment is not clear although many women believe soy supplementation is beneficial based primarily on results from epidemiological studies. Moshe Shike, M.D., from the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, NY, and colleagues conducted a randomized placebo-controlled study of the effects of soy supplementation on gene expression and markers of breast cancer risk among women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. The study, run between 2003 and 2007 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, enrolled a total of 140 patients who were randomized to either soy supplementation (soy protein) or placebo (milk protein), which lasted from the initial surgical consultation to the day before surgery (range=7-30 days). Tumor tissues from the diagnostic biopsy (pre-treatment) and at the time of resection (post-treatment) were then analyzed. …
source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140525204409.htm
"The shape of the particles really seems to matter because the stretched, ellipsoidal particles we made performed much better than spherical ones in activating the immune system and reducing the animals’ tumors," according to Jordan Green, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a collaborator on this work. A summary of the team’s results was published online in the journal Biomaterials on Oct. 5. According to Green, one of the greatest challenges in the field of cancer medicine is tracking down and killing tumor cells once they have metastasized and escaped from a tumor mass…
The new research, led by researchers at the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan, Italy was published in Science Express. The disorder that weakens the body’s immune system is caused by a mutation in a gene that encodes the protein WASP. The most often used therapy is a bone marrow or stem cell transplant from a matching donor — often a sibling or relative…
UNC scientists used GEMMs to develop biomarkers for challenging molecular subtypes of human breast cancer, those for which there are fewer targets and therapies. Their work helps to further establish genetically engineered mouse models as predictors of human response to therapy. The molecular subtypes of breast cancer that the UNC group focused on — basal-like, luminal B, and claudin-low — are the most challenging types of breast cancer because these are tumors that don’t typically respond to drugs such as Herceptin or aromatase inhibitors. UNC was among the first to characterize these tumor subtypes, and this new report extends the understanding of them. …
source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/21/cdc-prepares-for-potential-outbreak-deadly-mers-virus/
Three people were being treated Saturday for a new respiratory virus that is alarming global health officials, in the first cases in Italy, says the country's health ministry. A 45-year-old man who had recently returned from a 40-day visit to Jordan was hospitalized in Tuscany with a high fever, cough and respiratory problems, says the ministry. Tuscan regional officials say that a young child who is related to the man and a work colleague also have the virus, the ministry said. All three patients were reported to be in good condition and were being treated in isolation. The virus is related to SARS, which killed about 800 people in a global epidemic in 2003. The U.N. health agency said earlier Saturday that it had been informed of 51 confirmed cases of the new virus since September. Thirty of those cases were fatal, including that of a Frenchman who died earlier in the week. Cases in Britain and Germany also have been reported. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/03/deadly-mers-virus-spreads-to-italy/
Saudi Arabia has reported another case of infection in a concentrated outbreak of a new strain of a virus that emerged in the Middle East last year and spread into Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday. In a disease outbreak update issued from its Geneva headquarters, the WHO said the latest patient is an 81-year-old woman with multiple medical conditions. She became ill on April 28 and is in a critical but stable condition. Worldwide, there have now been 41 laboratory-confirmed infections, including 20 deaths, since the new coronavirus was identified by scientists in September 2012. The novel coronavirus, which had been known as by the acronym nCoV but which some scientific journals now refer to as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, or MERS, belongs to the same family as viruses that cause common colds and the one that caused a deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003. MERS cases have so far been reported in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Britain, Germany and France, but Saudi Arabia has had the vast majority of cases. The WHO said that latest patient was in the same clinic in eastern Saudi Arabia that has seen 22 cases, nine of them fatal, since April 8. WHO experts visiting Saudi Arabia to consult with the authorities on the outbreak have said it seemed likely the new virus could be passed between humans, but only after prolonged, close contact.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/20/who-saudi-arabia-has-another-case-new-coronavirus/