Based on analysis of two large breast cancer databases, reduced activity of an autophagy gene, beclin 1, was related to both a higher incidence of triple-negative breast cancer and a poorer prognosis for breast cancer patients. …
The new research by specialists at St George’s, University of London, studied the treatment of brain cancer tumours in the laboratory and discovered that the most effective treatment was to combine active chemical components of the cannabis plant which are called cannabinoids. Two of these called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) were tested as part of the research into brain cancer which is particularly difficult to treat and claims the lives of about 5,200 each year. …
They found that the use of trastuzumab produced a 37 percent improvement in survival and a 40 percent reduction in risk of cancer occurrence, compared to patients treated with chemotherapy alone. These findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, demonstrate how important trastuzumab has been to the treatment of this form of breast cancer, says the study’s lead author, Edith A. Perez, M.D., deputy director at large, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and director of the Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program at Mayo Clinic in Florida. “This long follow-up of patients shows that we have really altered the natural history of this disease,” says Dr…
That results in lots of needless worry for women and their families — not to mention the time, discomfort and expense of additional tests, including ultrasounds and biopsies. Recently, a different type of test, ultrasound elastography, has been used to pinpoint possible tumors throughout the body, including in the breast. “It uses imaging to measure the stiffness of tissue, and cancer tissues are stiff,” says Jingfeng Jiang, a biomedical engineer at Michigan Technological University…
The new method works by silencing cancer ‘survival genes’ and could potentially combat cancer through the selective killing of colorectal cancer cells without adverse effects on normal, non-cancer cells. Funded by York’s Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders (C2D2), the project led by Professor Jo Milner from York’s Department of Biology involved preliminary studies to establish the suitability of an ex vivo model for the future development of anti-cancer therapies for colorectal cancer using a technique called RNA interference. The new approach builds on ground-breaking research by Professor Milner and her team at York more than a decade ago. This early work, funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research (YCR), used the newly-developed technique of RNA interference to successfully kill human cervical cancer cells grown in culture without causing damage to healthy cells. …
On average, healthy individuals carry about five types of viruses on their bodies, the researchers report online in BioMed Central Biology. …
Dr. McNeill’s team has an international reputation for their work in understanding how cells become organized into tissues and how growth is regulated during development…
The University of Lincoln’s Professor Nigel Allinson MBE will deliver the keynote talk at the tenth International Conference on Position Sensitive Detectors. The conference, which takes place from 7th to 12th September 2014, features the latest developments in this field from leading researchers around the world. Professor Allinson leads the pioneering PRaVDA (Proton Radiotherapy Verification and Dosimetry Applications) project. He and his multinational team are developing one of the most complex medical instruments ever imagined to improve the delivery of proton beam therapy in the treatment of cancer…
As EphA3 is present in normal organs only during embryonic development but is expressed in blood cancers and in solid tumors, this antibody-based approach may be a suitable candidate treatment for solid tumors. The researchers from Monash University and Ludwig Cancer Research, in Australia, and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, in the US, have had their findings published in the journal Cancer Research. The team, led jointly by the late Professor Martin Lackmann, from the School of Biomedical Sciences at Monash; and Professor Andrew Scott, from Ludwig Cancer Research, has found that even if tumor cells do not have this molecule they can thrive by recruiting and taking advantage of supporting EphA3-containing cells in the tumor micro-environment…
The trial compared the activity of the combination of the drug olaparib, which blocks DNA repair, and the blood vessel inhibitor drug cediranib, vs. olaparib alone. Trial results showed a near doubling of progression-free survival benefit for the combination therapy over use of the single drug alone…