Tag Archives: nyu

Early adoption of robotic surgery leads to organ preservation for kidney cancer patients

Researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere, publishing online December 11 in the journal Medical Care, report that by 2008, hospitals that had adopted robotic surgery at the start of the current century (between 2001 and 2004) performed partial nephrectomies in 38% of kidney cancer cases compared to late adopters (2005 to 2008) who performed partial nephrectomies only 24% of the time. Partial nephrectomy, the removal of a section of the kidney as opposed to the removal of the entire organ, is preferred over total nephrectomy because it can achieve similar outcomes in cancer while avoiding the long-term risks associated with total kidney removal, such as cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney failure and premature death…

Advances in creating treatment for common childhood blood cancer

An estimated quarter of the 500 U.S. adolescents and young adults diagnosed each year with this aggressive disease fail to respond to standard chemotherapy drugs that target cancer cells. In a report on the work conducted with mice and human laboratory cells, and published in the Oct. 23 edition of the journal Nature, the NYU Langone team concludes that the enzyme JMJD3 — (pronounced ju-mon-ji D3) — acts as a cancer “on” switch by splitting off a chemical methyl group of another protein that is usually methylated by a tumor-suppressing enzyme. …

More than two-thirds of healthy Americans are infected with human papilloma viruses

Researchers say that while most of the viral strains so far appear to be harmless and can remain dormant for years, their overwhelming presence suggests a delicate balancing act for HPV infection in the body, in which many viral strains keep each other in check, preventing other strains from spreading out of control. Although infection is increasingly known to happen through skin-to-skin contact, HPV remains the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. It is so common that experts estimate nearly all men and women contract some strain of it during their lives. …