Tag Archives: materials

Five daily portions of fruit and vegetables may be enough to lower risk of early death

These results conflict with a recent study published in BMJ’s Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggesting that seven or more daily portions of fruits and vegetables were linked to lowest risk of death. There is growing evidence that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption is related to a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. However, the results are not entirely consistent. …

Is a cancer drug working? Modified drug gives a ‘green light’ for its own success

Cancer drugs can be modified to specifically target tumour sites to help personalize cancer treatment. And while it is relatively easy to determine if the drugs have been delivered to the correct location, it is more difficult to monitor their therapeutic success. Now, a team led by Bin Liu from the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering in Singapore, in collaboration with Ben Zhong Tang at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has developed an anticancer drug with an inbuilt mechanism that shows if it is working. Platinum-based drugs are effective against many cancers, killing cells by triggering cellular suicide, or apoptosis…

Novel technologies advance brain surgery to benefit patients

“Tumors located at the base of the skull are particularly challenging to treat due to the location of delicate anatomic structures and critical blood vessels,” said neurosurgeon Clark C. Chen, MD, PhD, UC San Diego Health System. “The conventional approach to excising these tumors involves long skin incisions and removal of a large piece of skull. …

Understanding melanoma development

Fair-skinned people who tend to burn (rather than tan) from sun exposure have a much higher risk for melanoma than darker-skinned people. On the surface, it appears that the amount of melanin, the natural substance in the skin that determines pigment and acts as the skin’s “natural sunscreen,” would be the only determinant of melanoma risk. However, the truth is more complicated. …

Four in 10 pancreatic cancers could be prevented by lifestyle changes

Every year 8,800 people are diagnosed with the disease in the UK but survival rates remain very low, with only three per cent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer surviving their disease for five years or more after their diagnosis. Cancer Research UK has made pancreatic cancer research a priority, and has the bold ambition to more than double its annual spend of £6million on research into the disease over the next five years. The charity is investing in fundamental biology investigating how the cancer spreads as well as trials looking at boosting the effectiveness of the standard chemotherapy treatments in pancreatic cancer patients. While more research is needed to find better ways of diagnosing and treating the disease, there is evidence to suggest that some pancreatic cancers are linked to being overweight and to smoking — and almost four in 10 could be prevented by lifestyle changes to address this…

Genetics the dominant risk factor in common cancers

Researchers at the Centre for Primary Health Care Research at Lund University and Region Skåne in Sweden have presented the new research findings based on studies of population registers. “The results of our study do not mean that an individual’s lifestyle is not important for the individual’s risk of developing cancer, but it suggests that the risk for the three most common types of cancer is dependent to a greater extent on genetics,” said Bengt Zöller, a reader at Lund University who led the study. The researchers studied adoptees born in Sweden in relation to both their biological parents and their adoptive parents. The Swedish multi-generation register and the cancer register were used to monitor 70 965 adopted men and women. …