Tag Archives: professor

Viewing cancer on the move: New device yields close-up look at metastasis

The inventors, from the university’s Whiting School of Engineering and its Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT), published details and images from their new system recently in the journal Cancer Research. Their article reported on successful tests that captured video of human breast cancer cells as they burrowed through reconstituted body tissue material and made their way into an artificial blood vessel. “There’s still so much we don’t know about exactly how tumor cells migrate through the body, partly because, even using our best imaging technology, we haven’t been able to see precisely how these individual cells move into blood vessels,” said Andrew D. …

New molecular imaging technology could improve bladder-cancer detection — ScienceDaily

The researchers identified a protein known as CD47 as a molecular imaging target to distinguish bladder cancer from benign tissues. In the future, this technique could improve bladder cancer detection, guide more precise cancer surgery and reduce unnecessary biopsies, therefore increasing cancer patients’ quality of life. The work is described in a paper that will be published Oct. 29 in Science Translational Medicine…

Survival rates in pediatric umbilical cord transplants may indicate a new standard of care

The research, led by John Wagner, Jr., M.D., director of the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation program at the University of Minnesota and a researcher in the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, compared outcomes in children with acute leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome who received transplants of either one or two units of partially matched cord blood. The study was conducted at multiple sites nationwide, between December 2006 and February 2012. Coordinating the study was the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMT CTN) in collaboration with the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium and the Children’s Oncology Group. …

Genetic architecture of kidney cancer uncovered by research

The research, by an international team led by scientists from the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre in Montreal, underscores the importance of investigating possible sources of exposure to aristolochic acid. The compound, found in plants of the Aristolochia genus, also has been suspected of causing a kidney disease known as Balkan endemic nephropathy, affecting people along the tributaries of the Danube River in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. Aristolochia clematitis, or European birthwort, is a common plant throughout the Balkans. Results of the study, which focused on the most common form of kidney cancer — clear-cell renal cell carcinoma — are reported in Nature Communications…

Radiation exposure linked to aggressive thyroid cancers, researchers confirm for the first time

Researchers examined thyroid cancers diagnosed up to two decades after the Chernobyl accident and found that higher thyroid radiation doses estimated from measurements taken shortly after the accident were associated with more aggressive tumor features. “Our group has previously shown that exposures to radioactive iodine significantly increase the risk of thyroid cancer in a dose-dependent manner. The new study shows that radiation exposures are also associated with distinct clinical features that are more aggressive,” said the paper’s first author, Lydia Zablotska, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC San Francisco (UCSF). The paper will be published online in the journal Cancer…

Tomosynthesis improves cancer detection in women with dense breast tissue

The study found that adding tomosynthesis (3D mammography) to routine biennial digital mammography screening among U.S. women with dense breasts could improve health outcomes at a reasonable cost relative to digital mammography screening alone. This is the first comparative effectiveness study performed at the national level using an established model, and it could influence future screening recommendations for women with dense breast tissue who comprise nearly half of all women in the United States. “We felt that this analysis would help inform timely policy and practice decisions given both increased attention to screening for women with dense breasts and rapid adoption of tomosynthesis in routine practice,” said Christoph I. …

Blood test may help diagnose pancreatic cancer

In research published today in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, Murray Korc, M.D., the Myles Brand Professor of Cancer Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a researcher at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, and colleagues found that several microRNAs — small RNA molecules — circulate at high levels in the blood of pancreatic cancer patients. “This is a new finding that extends previous knowledge in this field,” Dr. Korc said. …

Improving breast cancer chemo by testing patient’s tumors in a dish

A team of biomedical engineers at Vanderbilt University headed by Assistant Professor Melissa Skala has developed the technique, which uses fluorescence imaging to monitor the response of three-dimensional chunks of tumors removed from patients and exposed to different anti-cancer drugs. In an article published last month by the journal Cancer Research the engineers describe applying the technique to the three major forms of breast cancer. …