This study included 751 Kaiser Permanente patients with prostate cancer who underwent radical prostatectomy, an operation that includes removal of the prostate and surrounding tissue. The researchers explored the association between the patients’ body mass index and prostate cancer mortality, adjusted for tumor aggressiveness and other characteristics…
"Our research confirms past claims that coffee is good for your health, and particularly the liver," said Carlo La Vecchia, MD, study author from the department of epidemiology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri," and department of clinical sciences and community health, Università degli Studi di Milan, Italy. "The favorable effect of coffee on liver cancer might be mediated by coffee’s proven prevention of diabetes, a known risk factor for the disease, or for its beneficial effects on cirrhosis and liver enzymes." Researchers performed a meta-analysis of articles published from 1996 through September 2012, ultimately studying 16 high-quality studies and a total of 3,153 cases. This research fills an important gap as the last meta-analysis was published in 2007, and since then there has been data published on more than 900 cases of HCC. …
"By itself, staurosporine shows potent activity against a number of cancer cell lines, including chemotherapy-resistant tumors. However, it also harms normal tissue," said senior author Santosh Kesari, MD, PhD, director of neuro-oncology at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. "With this study, we have been able to overcome the pharmacokinetic barriers to delivering staurosporine to tumors with the use of liposomes." STS was originally isolated from the bacterium Streptomyces staurosporeus in 1977. The compound prompts a wide variety of cancer cell types to self-destruct, a process called apoptosis or programmed cell death. …
By studying when and where mutations occur the researchers hope to gain insights into the early mechanisms that send cells along a pathway to cancer. The new international study coordinated by Roland Eils has now for the first time analyzed the exact distribution of somatic mutations in the genomes of tumor cells of various types of cancer. Mutations do not affect all regions of the genome to the same extent. It is known, for example, that the number of somatic mutations depends on the sequence of bases making up a gene and the frequency at which it is transcribed into RNA molecules. …
Researchers are constantly trying to learn more about the body’s advanced communication processes. Receptors serve as a kind of switchboard in the cell, which connects specific signaling proteins to specific cellular functions. Using state-of-the-art technology, researchers at University of Copenhagen have studied a special cell surface receptor of major importance for health and disease…
The research team of Prof. Bożena Kamińska from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw developed — so far only in animal model — a method of converting malignant gliomas (brain tumours) into benign forms. Since the cells of benign gliomas are subdued and sometimes even eliminated by the host’s immune system, the prospects for survival of sick animals significantly increase…
Orange juice has many potential positive effects when it comes to cancer, particularly because it is high in antioxidants from flavonoids such as hesperitin and naringinin. …
Now a team of researchers in China has developed a new microfluidic chip that can quickly and efficiently segregate and capture live circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from a patient’s blood, with potential applications for cancer screenings and treatment assessments. …
The researchers investigated similarities between the transition of neural stem cells into neurons and the process whereby cancer cells invade surrounding tissues. …
Although transplant specialists have been able to reduce its impact, graft-versus-host disease remains a leading cause of death among patients who receive a stem cell transplant from another person, known as an allogeneic transplant. Such transplants are used to treat blood and bone marrow cancers such as leukemia and multiple myeloma, often as a last resort…