Tag Archives: study

New viral mutation made middle-aged adults more susceptible to last year’s flu

“We identified a mutation in recent H1N1 strains that allows viruses to avoid immune responses that are present in a large number of middle-aged adults,” said Scott Hensley, Ph.D., a member of Wistar’s Vaccine Center and an assistant professor in the Translational Tumor Immunology program of Wistar’s Cancer Center. Historically, children and the elderly are most susceptible to the severe effects of the influenza viruses, largely because they have weaker immune systems…

Years after treatment for HER2-positve early stage breast cancer, trastuzumab continues to show life-altering benefit — ScienceDaily

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…

Earlier unknown molecular-level mechanism may contribute to growth rate of breast cancer

MicroRNAs are small intracellular RNA molecules that regulate gene expression. Therefore, they play important roles in various normal processes of the human body, such as embryogenesis, and the regulation of cell viability. In addition, it is known that abnormal amounts of microRNA stimulate the onset and development of different diseases, such as cancer…

Human cancer prognosis related to newly identified immune cell

The research is published online October 16, 2014 in the journal Cancer Cell. Molecules associated with these cells, newly identified by the UCSF researchers, could be the focus of new immunotherapies that are more precisely targeted than current immunotherapies now in clinical trials, said Matthew Krummel, PhD, professor of pathology at UCSF and the leader of the study. In fact, the UCSF researchers concluded that the presence of these cells may be the reason current immunotherapies aimed at boosting T lymphocyte responses have any effectiveness whatsoever. Krummel’s lab team depleted the population of these already rare cells in mice and demonstrated that the immune system was then unable to control tumors, even when the mice were given immunotherapeutic treatments…

Personalized ovarian cancer vaccines developed

“This has the potential to dramatically change how we treat cancer,” says Dr. Pramod Srivastava, director of the Carole and Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at UConn Health and one of the principal investigators on the study. “This research will serve as the basis for the first ever genomics-driven personalized medicine clinical trial in immunotherapy of ovarian cancer, and will begin at UConn Health this fall,” Srivastava says. UConn bioinformatics engineer Ion Mandoiu, associate professor of computer science and engineering, collaborated as the other principal investigator for the study, which has been in development for the past four years…

Ebola highlights disparity of disease burden in developed vs. developing countries

“Our goal is to provide information about trends and patterns to bring to light what’s going on around the world so that funds can be allocated and policy developed as needed,” says Lindsay Boyers, medical student at Georgetown University, working in the lab or Robert Dellavalle, MD, PhD, MSPH investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, associate professor of dermatology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the paper’s senior author. The paper used data from the Global Burden of Disease Study, an ongoing project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to collect a billion data points describing the distribution of the world’s diseases. Of the 269 diseases in the GBD database, this study compares rates in developed versus developing countries of Ebola, malignant melanoma, basal and squamous cell carcinoma, decubitus ulcer, bacterial skin diseases, cellulitis, varicella (including chickenpox, congenital varicella infection, and herpes zoster), syphilis, measles, and dengue. Specifically, findings show that in 2010 the measles death rate was 197 times greater in developing countries than in developed countries, but this ratio was down from 345-to-1 in 1990. …

Side effects of cancer prevention surgery can be helped with a single-day education program, study finds

The program taught women how to manage some of the physical and emotional difficulties that can follow ovary-removing surgery and helped many participants resume satisfying sexual activity and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression, the investigators found. The study, published today in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, underscores the need to inform women about the aftereffects of this type of surgery and, critically, let them know that such problems can be dealt with successfully. “For women who inherit genetic mutations that put them at increased risk for ovarian cancer, oophorectomy — surgical removal of the ovaries — can sharply lower that risk…

New technique enables increasingly accurate PET scan to detect cancer, heart conditions

In the future, the newly developed technique will enable increasingly accurate image acquisition especially during PET scans performed to detect cancers of the chest and upper abdomen, and inflammatory diseases of the heart. PET scanning, or positron emission tomography, is a modern nuclear medicine imaging method, which allows for the detection of cancer and heart conditions. Thanks to enhanced image quality, PET images provide new and increasingly accurate data, potentially improving diagnosis reliability and treatment response monitoring. High-quality image data makes the treatment more efficient both medically and financially. …