Tag Archives: model

Clinical tool classifies spots on lung scans of smokers

The findings are expected to have immediate clinical impact worldwide among health professionals who currently diagnose and treat individuals at risk for or who are diagnosed with lung cancer, and provide new evidence for developing and improving lung-cancer screening programs. A total of 12,029 lung cancer nodules observed on CTs of 2,961 current and former smokers were examined in the population-based study. The results, to be published in the Sept. 5th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), will have an immediate impact on clinical practice, says co-principal investigator Dr. …

Genes that drive brain cancer revealed

The study was published August 5, 2013, in Nature Genetics. "Cancers rely on driver genes to remain cancers, and driver genes are the best targets for therapy," said Antonio Iavarone, MD, professor of pathology and neurology at Columbia University Medical Center and a principal author of the study. "Once you know the driver in a particular tumor and you hit it, the cancer collapses. We think our study has identified the vast majority of drivers in glioblastoma, and therefore a list of the most important targets for glioblastoma drug development and the basis for personalized treatment of brain cancer." Personalized treatment could be a reality soon for about 15 percent of glioblastoma patients, said Anna Lasorella, MD, associate professor of pediatrics and of pathology & cell biology at CUMC. …

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…

Pluripotent stem cells made from pancreatic cancer cells are first human model of the cancer’s progression

Still, researchers and clinicians don’t have a non-invasive way to even detect early cells that portent later disease. ‘There’s no PSA test for pancreatic cancer,’ they say, and that’s one of the main reasons why pancreatic cancer is detected so late in its course. They have been searching for a human-cell model of early-disease progression…

Using math to kill cancer cells

"Oncolytic viruses are special in that they specifically target cancer cells," explains Dr. Bell, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine. "Unfortunately, cancer is a very complicated and diverse disease, and some viruses work well in some circumstances and not well in others. As a result, there has been a lot of effort in trying to modify the viruses to make them safe, so they don’t target healthy tissue and yet are more efficient in eliminating cancer cells." Dr. …