"Increased use of single fraction treatment would achieve the Holy Grail of health reform, which is real improvements in patient care at substantial cost savings," said the new study’s lead author, Justin E. Bekelman, MD, an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology in Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center…
The disease is typically diagnosed through an invasive and complicated biopsy. But a discovery by researchers at the UCLA School of Dentistry may be one major step toward creating a noninvasive tool that would enable clinicians and oncologists to detect pancreatic cancer through a simple risk assessment test using saliva. In a study on a tumor-ridden mouse model, the UCLA researchers were able to definitively validate that pancreatic cancer biomarkers reside in saliva…
For decades, scientists have experimented with using nerve grafts as a way of bridging the spinal cord injury site in an attempt to recover lost function following spinal cord injury. However, coaxing these cells to grow and form connections capable of relaying nerve signals has been elusive. In the current study, Yu-Shang Lee, PhD, of the Cleveland Clinic, together with Jerry Silver, PhD, of Case Western Reserve Medical School, and others, used a chemical that promotes cell growth along with a scar-busting enzyme to create a more hospitable environment for the nerve graft at the injury site. …
Published in the Oct. 4 issue of the journal Cancer, the study also found considerable geographic variation in the cost of prostate cancer screening…
Reuben Kapur, Ph.D., the Frieda and Albrecht Kipp Professor of Pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, and colleagues discovered in pre-clinical and pharmacological models that cancer cells with a mutation in the KIT receptor — an oncogenic/cancerous form of the receptor — in mast cell leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia can be stopped. Their findings were published online Sept…
A new method developed by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Michigan called "in silico nano-dissection" uses computers rather than scalpels to separate and identify genes from specific cell types, enabling the systematic study of genes involved in diseases. The team used the new method to successfully identify genes expressed in cells known as podocytes — the "work-horses" of the kidney — that malfunction in kidney disease. The investigators showed that certain patterns of activity of these genes were correlated with the severity of kidney impairment in patients, and that the computer-based approach was significantly more accurate than existing experimental methods in mice at identifying cell-lineage-specific genes…
That’s according to research presented to the 2013 European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam. The team of scientists is led by an investigator at University of Colorado Cancer Center. An analysis of 20,034 patients in 24 phase III clinical trials showed that the youngest and oldest patients had the highest risk of disease progression and death, compared to middle-aged patients…
"Angiotensin inhibitors are safe blood pressure medications that have been used for over a decade in patients and could be repurposed for cancer treatment," explains Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, director of the Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology at MGH and senior author of the study. "Unlike anti-angiogenesis drugs, which improve tumor blood flow by repairing the abnormal structure of tumor blood vessels, angiotensin inhibitors open up those vessels by releasing physical forces that are applied to tumor blood vessels when the gel-like matrix surrounding them expands with tumor growth." Focusing on how the physical and physiological properties of tumors can inhibit cancer therapies, Jain’s team previously found that losartan improves the distribution within tumors of relatively large molecules called nanomedicines by inhibiting the formation of collagen, a primary constituent of the extracellular matrix…
Cell division is the process in which cells reproduce by splitting into two identical copies. This process happens trillions of times in an average person’s lifetime…
"Our finding provides a target to prevent these rearrangements, so we could conceivably prevent cancer in some high-risk people," said senior author Edward P. (Paul) Hasty, D.V.M., of the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. …