Tag Archives: professor

Oxygen – key to most life – decelerates many cancer tumors when combined with radiation therapy

In research examining tissue oxygenation levels and predicting radiation response, UT Southwestern scientists led by Dr. Ralph Mason reported in the June 27 online issue of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine that countering hypoxic and aggressive tumors with an "oxygen challenge" — inhaling oxygen while monitoring tumor response — coincides with a greater delay in tumor growth in an irradiated animal model…

New approach for studying deadly brain cancer

Now a team of engineers has developed a three-dimensional hydrogel that more closely mimics conditions in the brain. In a paper in the journal Biomaterials, the researchers describe the new material and their approach, which allows them to selectively tune up or down the malignancy of the cancer cells they study. The new hydrogel is more versatile than other 3-D gels used for growing glioma (brain cancer) cells in part because it allows researchers to change individual parameters — the gel’s stiffness, for example, or the presence of molecular signals that can influence cancer growth — while minimally altering its other characteristics, such as porosity. …

Alternative target for breast cancer drugs

"Our findings suggest that Ret kinase might be an attractive and novel alternative therapeutic target in selected groups of breast cancer patients," remarked Nancy Hynes, Professor at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research and the University of Basel, Switzerland. "Initial experiments in mice that serve as model organisms for the study of breast cancer have revealed that specific inhibitors significantly block the spread of cancer and decrease the number of metastatic tumours found in the lungs." The scientists examined tumour tissue microarrays of more than 100 breast cancer patients who had undergone surgery to remove their tumours. Antibodies were used to detect the levels of Ret in the samples. …

‘Intelligent knife’ tells surgeon which tissue is cancerous

In the first study to test the invention in the operating theatre, the "iKnife" diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 per cent accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests. The findings, by researchers at Imperial College London, are published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, the European Research Council and the Hungarian National Office for Research and Technology. …

Injectable ‘smart sponge’ holds promise for controlled drug delivery

"We wanted to mimic the function of health beta-cells, which produce insulin and control its release in a healthy body," says Dr. Zhen Gu, lead author of a paper describing the work and an assistant professor in the joint biomedical engineering program at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. …

Chromosomal abnormalities may explain increased cancer risk in type 2 diabetes

Their work was published on July 14, 2013 on the Nature Genetics website. There are more than 200 million diabetics worldwide, and one in three suffer from vascular or nerve complications. In 2012, two studies published in Nature Genetics showed that large chromosomal clonal mosaic events (CMEs)(2) affecting large portions of chromosomes (or even their totality), could be observed in the DNA of blood or saliva cells from some ageing individuals. These studies also suggested that CMEs could predict the risk of cancer, and notably leukemia, in these individuals. …

New insights on cancer cell signaling

Wnt proteins are a large family of proteins that active signaling pathways (a set of biological reactions in a cell) to control several vital steps in embryonic development. In adults, Wnt-mediated functions are frequently altered in many types of cancers and, specifically, within cell subpopulations that possess stem cell-like properties…

Antiviral enzyme contributes to several forms of cancer

The discovery, reported in the July 14 issue of Nature Genetics, follows the team’s earlier finding that the enzyme, called APOBEC3B, is responsible for more than half of breast cancer cases. The previous study was published in Nature in February. APOBEC3B is part of a family of antiviral proteins that Harris has studied for more than a decade. …