Tag Archives: master

Discovery of pro-metastasis protein reveals mysterious link to neurodegeneration — ScienceDaily

In work published earlier this month in Nature, they identify a protein that appears to act as a “master regulator” by blocking tumor suppressor genes and so helping to set metastasis in motion. “Although the research is in its very early days, if we learn more about how this process works, we may in the future be able to generate drugs that block the triggering of metastatic disease,” says Sohail Tavazoie, senior author on the study, Leon Hess Assistant Professor, and head of the Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology. To pinpoint this protein, Tavazoie and his colleagues used a computer algorithm previously developed by first author Hani Goodarzi and co-author Saeed Tavazoie, a professor at Columbia University, to scan both the sequence and shape of RNA molecules in breast cancer cells. Only recently have cancer researchers begun to systematically look at the shapes of messenger RNA molecules, which encode instructions from DNA. …

Researchers test bandaging for swollen arm

But there’s no difference if simple compression bandages or a complicated daily lymphatic massage are used as treatment, McMaster University researchers have found. "In the future, patients who receive or can only afford elastic sleeves and gloves should be comforted knowing that their care has not been compromised," said Dr. Ian Dayes, associate professor of oncology for the Michael G…

Fewer tobacco products, but not alcohol, in movies

Movie characters smoke less since 1998 regulations that stopped tobacco companies from buying on-screen brand placements, according to a new study. But at the same time, researchers found the number of alcohol brand appearances has increased in popular movies rated PG-13 and below, and the amount of time characters spend drinking hasn't changed. “These results are of great concern,” said David Jernigan, head of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “In movie reality, it seems like every occasion is right for a drink,” said Jernigan, who wasn't involved in the new study. And that suggests to young viewers that alcohol is much more common than is actually the case, he said. “This whole conversation is about normalization of alcohol use,” Jernigan said. “Young people are particularly vulnerable to the message that drinking is everywhere.” For the new study, researchers watched the top 100 box office releases of each year between 1996 and 2009 and recorded when a movie character was shown using or handling tobacco or alcohol, and when a particular brand was pictured. In all, Elaina Bergamini from the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and her colleagues recorded 500 tobacco and 2,433 alcohol brand placements in all films combined. The number of tobacco brand appearances ranged from 54 to 98 per year before 2000, then declined to 22 per year after 2006. The amount of time characters were shown using tobacco also dropped over time in both youth and adult movies. That suggests the 1998 regulation, part of the Master Settlement Agreement between tobacco companies and U.S. states, successfully stopped the tobacco industry from paying for its products to be shown on screen, the study team wrote in JAMA Pediatrics. On the other hand, alcohol brand appearances in youth-rated movies, in particular, increased from 80 to 145 per year during the study period. Budweiser was the most common alcohol brand shown in films. Parent company Anheuser Busch did not comment before press time. Jernigan said that because there's unlikely to be a similar settlement for the beverage industry, any regulation on product placement would have to come from the companies themselves or from the movie industry. For example, some organizations have suggested movies showing drinking should automatically be rated R. Concern stems from research tying on-screen smoking and drinking to more of that behavior among youth who watch those movies. “Children who see smoking in the movies are more likely to initiate smoking,” Bergamini said. “I think there is some concern that that may hold true for alcohol as well.” “The notorious thing you find in movies and in TV is heavy drinking without consequences,” Jernigan said. “It leaves it up to parents to tell the consequences story.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/29/fewer-tobacco-products-but-not-alcohol-in-movies/

African-Americans experience longer delays between diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer

To see if there is a difference in the time from cancer diagnosis to initiation of treatment for African American men compared with Caucasian men with prostate cancer, Ronald Chen, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his colleagues analyzed data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare registry, which links cancer diagnosis data to a master file of Medicare records. Their analysis included 2,506 African American and 21,454 Caucasian patients diagnosed with early (non-metastatic) prostate cancer from 2004 to 2007 and treated within 12 months of diagnosis…

Making cancer less cancerous

"This master regulator is normally turned off in adult cells, but it is very active during embryonic development and in all highly aggressive tumors studied to date," says Linda Resar, M.D., an associate professor of medicine, oncology and pediatrics, and affiliate in the Institute for Cell Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Our work shows for the first time that switching this gene off in aggressive cancer cells dramatically changes their appearance and behavior." A description of the experiments appears in the May 2 issue of the journal PLOS ONE…