In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sangeeta Bhatia of MIT and Charles Rice of Rockefeller University describe using microfabricated cell cultures to sustain hepatitis B virus in human liver cells, allowing them to study immune responses and drug treatments. …
Despite there currently being a wide variety of compounds against cancer, they all have serious side effects. Furthermore, tumours are capable of becoming resistant, limiting this type of treatment. …
The value of mammography screening in older women has been subject to much debate in recent years. The American Cancer Society recommends annual mammograms for women age 75 and older as long as they are in good health, while the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) does not recommend mammography screening in this age group, citing insufficient evidence to evaluate benefits and harms. A lack of research is chiefly responsible for the divergent recommendations, according to Judith A…
The drug, known under the brand name Nanotax, is a fine particle reformulation of paclitaxel, the standard treatment for ovarian cancer. …
“This fascinating new finding could help doctors adapt their treatments to patients with bladder cancer,” said Nell Barrie, Cancer Research UK The team from The University of Manchester, funded by the Medical Research Council, found that patients whose bladder tumor had high levels of a protein, called ‘HIF-1α’, were more likely to benefit from having carbogen — oxygen mixed with carbon dioxide gas — and nicotinamide tablets at the same time as their radiotherapy. The treatment, called ‘CON’, makes radiotherapy more effective. By comparing levels of HIF-1α in tissue samples from 137 patients who had radiotherapy on its own or with CON, the researchers found the protein predicted which patients benefited from having CON. High levels of the protein were linked to better survival from the disease when patients had radiotherapy and CON. …
“Red meat and resistant starch have opposite effects on the colorectal cancer-promoting miRNAs, the miR-17-92 cluster,” said Karen J. Humphreys, PhD, a research associate at the Flinders Center for Innovation in Cancer at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. “This finding supports consumption of resistant starch as a means of reducing the risk associated with a high red meat diet.” “Total meat consumption in the USA, European Union, and the developed world has continued to increase from the 1960s, and in some cases has nearly doubled,” added Humphreys…
In fact, depending on the tumor cell, they grow at dramatically different speeds, according to a study led by Nicholas Navin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Genetics at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The study findings may have important implications for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer…
Cancer Research UK scientists have found a new use for an old drug by showing that it shrinks a particular type of pancreatic cancer tumour and stops it spreading, according to researchpublished in Gut*. The scientists, at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute and the University of Glasgow, treated mice with pancreatic cancers caused by known genetic faults with the drug rapamycin**. Previous clinical trials did not find this drug to be effective as a treatment for pancreatic cancers when it was given to all patients with different forms of the disease. But the team’s findings show that a particular type of pancreatic tumour – caused by a fault in the gene PTEN, which is involved in cell growth – may be responsive to the drug after all. …
The chemists, led by Professor Peter Scott at the University of Warwick, UK, have been able to produce molecules that have a similar structure to peptides which are naturally produced in the body to fight cancer and infection. Published in Nature Chemistry, the molecules produced in the research have proved effective against colon cancer cells in laboratory tests, in collaboration with Roger Phillips at the Institute for Cancer Therapeutics, Bradford, UK…
“The key to developing an expressive writing intervention is the writing instruction. Otherwise, writing is just like a journal recording facts and events. Writing a journal can be therapeutic, but oftentimes we don’t get the empirical evidence to determine whether it’s effective or not,” said Qian Lu, assistant professor and director of the Culture and Health Research Center at UH…