Tag Archives: professor

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…

‘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…

Nearly half of sarcoma surgeries done by nonsurgical oncology specialists

The remaining 48 percent of these sarcoma surgeries were conducted by general surgeons, plastic surgeons and orthopedic surgeons, whose post-medical degree fellowship training did not emphasize the multi-disciplinary evaluation and surgical management of sarcomas and other cancers located deep in the soft tissue of the arms and legs, said Robert J. Canter, associate professor of surgery at UC Davis and first author of the journal article. …

Sugar makes cancer light-up in MRI scanners

The new technique, called ‘glucose chemical exchange saturation transfer’ (glucoCEST), is based on the fact that tumours consume much more glucose (a type of sugar) than normal, healthy tissues in order to sustain their growth. The researchers found that sensitising an MRI scanner to glucose uptake caused tumours to appear as bright images on MRI scans of mice. Lead researcher Dr Simon Walker-Samuel, from the UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI) said: "GlucoCEST uses radio waves to magnetically label glucose in the body. This can then be detected in tumours using conventional MRI techniques…

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…

Adding chemotherapy to surgery improves survival in advanced gastric cancer, study confirms

At the meeting Prof Sung Hoon Noh, a gastric surgeon from Yonsei University College of Medicine, Korea, presented 5-year follow-up from the phase III CLASSIC trial, which added combination chemotherapy to a standard surgical procedure called D2 gastrectomy. The chemotherapy regimen studied in the trial is called XELOX, which is a combination of the drugs capecitabine and oxaliplatin. …