Tag Archives: power

World’s first method for continuous purification of valuable antibodies

Without antibodies we would be at the mercy of pathogens or cancer cells. Therapeutic antibodies are used as passive vaccines, for cancer therapy or for controlling autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. According to “bccresearch.com” the global market for antibody drugs was worth nearly 70 billion USD in 2014 and should rise to 122 billion USD until 2019. Two thirds of those molecules are produced biotechnologically using Chinese hamster ovary cells (CHO)…

Modeling tumor dormancy: What makes a tumor switch from dormant to malignant?

A new computational model developed in the laboratory of Salvatore Torquato, a Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, may help illuminate the conditions surrounding tumor dormancy and the switch to a malignant state. Published today in PLOS ONE, the so-called cellular automaton model simulated various scenarios of tumor growth leading to tumor suppression, dormancy or proliferation. “The power of the model is that it lets people to test medically realistic scenarios,” Torquato said. In future collaborations, these scenarios could be engineered in laboratory experiments and the observed outcomes could be used to calibrate the model. …

Wireless sensor transmits tumor pressure

Contents under Pressure Tumors, like healthy tissues, need oxygen and nutrients to survive. In order to accommodate the demands of a growing tumor, blood vessels from surrounding tissue begin to grow into the tumor. Yet, unlike normal tissue, these newly formed blood vessels are disorganized, twisty, and leaky. It’s thought that the high pressure observed in tumors is a result of these abnormal blood vessels, which leak fluid and proteins into the area between tumor cells, known as the interstitial space…

Sabotage as therapy: Aiming lupus antibodies at vulnerable cancer cells

The findings were published recently in Nature’s journal Scientific Reports. The study, led by James E. Hansen, M.D., assistant professor of therapeutic radiology at Yale School of Medicine, found that cancer cells with deficient DNA repair mechanisms (or the inability to repair their own genetic damage) were significantly more vulnerable to attack by lupus antibodies. “Patients with lupus make a wide range of autoantibodies that attack their own cells and contribute to the signs and symptoms associated with lupus…

More powerful approach to analyze melanoma’s genetic causes

The gene-gene interactions underlying CM had not been fully explored. The usual functional model uses substitution of alleles for estimating genetic effects but the estimators are confounded. The NOIA model estimates population effects of alleles and the resulting estimators are orthogonal and no longer confounded. In simulation studies, the NOIA model had higher power for finding interactions and main effects than the usual model. …

Gene promotes one in a hundred of tumors: Gene discovered to play a part in one per cent of all cancers

The team discovered that, when CUX1 is deactivated, a biological pathway is activated that increases tumour growth. Drugs that inhibit the biological pathway are currently being used in the clinic and are in development thus highlighting a potential new targeted therapy for patients with this type of cancer-causing mutation. …