The epigenetic changes examined highlight different patterns in DNA methylation, which involves the chemical modification of DNA and acts in the control of gene expression. While DNA methylation is a normal and necessary epigenetic process, breast tumors exhibit altered methylation patterns compared to normal breast tissue. Accordingly, atypical DNA methylation marks are recognized to precede cancer initiation…
Investigators in the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute have made extensive progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms of disease progression. These results may help scientists better understand the prognosis of patients diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. The study, published in the journal Cell Cycle and led by Dolores Di Vizio, MD, PhD, may ultimately lead to the development of new biomarkers for not only prognosis, but also a patient’s potential response to therapy. "One of the long-standing difficulties in treating men with advanced prostate cancer has been predicting the response to given therapies or treatments," said Di Vizio, associate professor in the Department of Surgery, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Department of Biomedical Sciences. …
The November Neurosurgery also reports on unusual language side effects in patients undergoing electrical brain stimulation for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and presents plans for a pilot study of a new vaccine therapy for patients with aggressive brain cancers called gliomas. Variations in Management of Child Brain Injury Dr…
Female family physicians are twice as likely to order the HPV test (in addition to screening for cervical cancer through pap smears) for low-risk women aged 30-65 than their male counterparts, according to the findings published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. …
A summary of the research, performed on a variety of different animal and human cells, was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 4, and suggests that exemestane’s effectiveness against breast cancer could be due to more than its ability to halt estrogen production, the scientists say. The study’s results further imply that the drug, a so-called aromatase (estrogen synthesis) inhibitor, could potentially be prescribed more widely, including to men, as a way to counteract the wear and tear on cells that often leads to chronic diseases. "Cells already have their own elaborate protective mechanisms, and in many cases they are ‘idling.’ The right drugs and foods can turn them on to full capacity," says Paul Talalay, M.D., the John Jacob Abel Distinguished Service Professor of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine…
Now, University of Pennsylvania researchers have revealed how a reduction in mitochondrial DNA content leads human breast cancer cells to take on aggressive, metastatic properties. The work, published in the journal Oncogene, breaks new ground in understanding why some cancers progress and spread faster than others and may offer clinicians a biomarker that would distinguish patients with particularly aggressive forms of disease, helping personalize treatment approaches. The study was led by the Penn School of Veterinary Medicine’s Manti Guha, a senior research investigator, and Narayan Avadhani, Harriet Ellison Woodward Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Animal Biology. Additional Penn Vet collaborators included Satish Srinivasan, Gordon Ruthel, Anna K. …
In research published recently in the journal Oncogene, Murray Korc, M.D., the Myles Brand Professor of Cancer Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a researcher at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, showed that an RNA molecule — microRNA-10b, or miR-10b — is present at high levels in the blood of most pancreatic cancer patients. Consequently, miR-10b could serve as a diagnostic marker as well as help physicians determine the disease’s aggressiveness…
Tumor removal surgeries pose a great challenge even to skillful and experienced surgeons. …
"Pancreatic cancer can be difficult to diagnose because of subtle differences that distinguish between healthy tissue, cancerous tissue and tissue that is atypical, or suspicious," said Lester Layfield, MD, professor and chair of the MU School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences. "Our goal was to find a way to make a more accurate and reproducible diagnosis." Because of the pancreas’ location within the body, no routine screening methods, such as mammography for breast cancer, exist for detecting pancreatic cancer. If a physician suspects a patient may have pancreatic cancer, a biopsy of the pancreatic tissue is taken through a minimally invasive technique called endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration…
"Men with castration-resistant prostate cancer have abysmal survival rates, typically living an average of two years once hormone therapies fail," says Manish Kohli, M.D., a Mayo Clinic oncologist and principal investigator of the Prostate Cancer Medically Optimized Genome-Enhanced Therapy (PROMOTE) study. Dr. Kohli says the poor prognosis for men with this cancer highlights the need for studies like PROMOTE, which seek to match new targeted drugs with the genomic characteristics of individual patients’ tumors. Several new therapies have recently been approved by the FDA for use in treating castration-resistant prostate cancer, offering new hope for men with this disease. …