Tag Archives: medicine

New theory uncovers cancer’s deep evolutionary roots

Davies and Lineweaver are both theoretical physicists and cosmologists with experience in the field of astrobiology — the search for life beyond Earth. They turned to cancer research only recently, in part because of the creation at Arizona State University of the Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology. The Center is one of twelve established by the National Cancer Institute to encourage physical scientists to lend their insights into tackling cancer. The new theory challenges the orthodox view that cancer develops anew in each host by a series of chance mutational accidents…

Location of body fat can elevate heart disease, cancer risk

Death and disease risk associated with excess body weight can vary among individuals with similar BMI. Ectopic fat, or fat located where it is not supposed to be, in this case being visible in the abdominal area, could be the cause of this difference in risk. It’s widely known that abdominal fat can be more dangerous than fat in other areas, but this study is the first to use CT scan to study specifically located fat depots for direct associations with disease risk…

Link between omega-3 fatty acids and increased prostate cancer risk confirmed

Published July 11 in the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the latest findings indicate that high concentrations of EPA, DPA and DHA — the three anti-inflammatory and metabolically related fatty acids derived from fatty fish and fish-oil supplements — are associated with a 71 percent increased risk of high-grade prostate cancer. The study also found a 44 percent increase in the risk of low-grade prostate cancer and an overall 43 percent increase in risk for all prostate cancers. The increase in risk for high-grade prostate cancer is important because those tumors are more likely to be fatal. The findings confirm a 2011 study published by the same Fred Hutch scientific team that reported a similar link between high blood concentrations of DHA and a more than doubling of the risk for developing high-grade prostate cancer. …

‘Scent device’ could help detect bladder cancer

There are currently no reliable biomarkers to screen patients for bladder cancer in the same way that there are for breast and cervical cancers. Previous research has suggested that a particular odour in the urine could be detected by dogs trained to recognise the scent, indicating that methods of diagnoses could be based on the smell of certain gases. The team have now built a device, called ODOREADER ® that contains a sensor which responds to chemicals in gas emitted from urine…

Inhibiting macrophage MerTK signaling creates an innate immune response against cancer

New evidence by a University of North Carolina-led team published online on July 8 by the Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that MerTK macrophage action in the microenvironment that surrounds cancer cells blunts the immune response, allowing the tumor cell to grow and metastasize. The study, led by senior author Shelley Earp, MD, director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, used mouse models bred without the gene for MerTK. Their work determined that MerTK absence increased the anti-tumor response and slowed the growth and spread of model breast, colon and skin cancers…

Cancer-linked FAM190A gene found to regulate cell division

In laboratory studies of cells, investigators found that knocking down expression of FAM190A disrupts mitosis. In three pancreatic cancer-cell lines and a standard human-cell line engineered to be deficient in FAM190A, researchers observed that cells often had difficulty separating at the end of mitosis, creating cells with two or more nuclei. The American Journal of Pathology published a description of the work online May 17, which comes nearly a century after German scientist Theodor Boveri linked abnormal mitosis to cancer…

Improved outlook for immune-based therapies: Assay identifies T cells most capable of fighting infections and cancers

Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have developed the first assay for living T cells that can quantify how strongly the cells’ receptors bind to their targeted antigen. Optimal binding strength or "structural avidity" is thought to be the most important predictor of success in adoptive transfer therapies…