The team discovered that, when CUX1 is deactivated, a biological pathway is activated that increases tumour growth. Drugs that inhibit the biological pathway are currently being used in the clinic and are in development thus highlighting a potential new targeted therapy for patients with this type of cancer-causing mutation. …
In a paper published in Molecular Cell, Zhimin Lu, Ph.D., professor of Neuro-Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and colleagues report how a tumor-specific protein flips a crucial switch in an irregular mechanism for mitosis that allows cancer cells to safely divide. "Our research shows that tumor cells rely heavily on a distinct mechanism for orderly cell division that’s driven by oncogene-induced pyruvate kinase M2," Lu said. After a cell begins division by replicating all of its chromosomes, mitosis separates them into two identical sets of chromosomes for both cells. After mitosis, cytokinesis completes cell divison. …
"We were able to demonstrate that simply squirting small amounts of otherwise discarded ascites fluid into our device allowed us to quantify tumor cells and explore mechanistic markers of tumor progression without the need to process liters of ascites with advanced instrumentation not readily available in many community hospitals," says Cesar Castro, MD, MMSc, MGH Cancer Center and Center for Systems Biology, co-lead author of the PNAS paper. "Moreover, achieving point-of-care readouts of tumor cell markers from repeatedly collected ascites at different time points, could allow for frequent monitoring of treatment response without having to wait for the next imaging scan." The ability to reliably track treatment response essentially lets caregivers know whether a particular anticancer drug should be continued or if another option should be tried. Tumor recurrence begins before metastases become visible on imaging studies, so several options for non-invasive "liquid biopsies" are being investigated, including analysis of circulating tumor cells and other factors found in the blood. Since ovarian cancer metastases are usually confined to the abdominal cavity and ascites commonly form in advanced disease, the research team theorized that ascites fluid could be an alternative, if not better, option than blood for treatment monitoring. …
A Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) work, led by Alfonso Valencia, Vice-Director of Basic Research, and Michael L. Tress, a researcher on his team, brings together the biggest collection of interactions between pharmacological molecules, including other compounds, and proteins, in the latest edition of the journal Nucleid Acids Research…
"We discovered that the enzyme USP13 stabilizes the PTEN protein by reversing a process that marks various proteins for destruction by the cell’s proteasome," said the paper’s senior author Li Ma, Ph.D., assistant professor of Experimental Radiation Oncology. "USP13 also suppresses tumor formation and glycolysis though PTEN," Ma said. Glycolysis is a glucose metabolism pathway that tumors rely on to thrive and grow…
If stretched out, the blood vessels in a human body would reach more than twice around the Earth. …
Animal experiments show that it is relatively easy to treat cancer in the early stages. However, it is far more difficult to successfully treat advanced cancer. Treatment of brain tumors is particularly challenging because regulatory T-cells accumulate in brain tumors and suppress an immune attack. …
Researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Birmingham, who have been studying breast and prostate cancer cells, show how manipulating PRH’s levels in cancer cells can hinder their ability to penetrate into neighbouring environments, potentially preventing them from entering nearby blood vessels. The findings could lead to new ways of combating the spread of the disease in multiple cancers. PRH belongs to a group of proteins known as ‘transcription factors’, meaning its role is to interact with DNA to ‘switch’ particular genes ‘on’ or ‘off’. Scientists have been aware of PRHs’ role in controlling cell growth and specification for some time…
Senior Research Fellow Dr Collin Sones and Professor Rob Eason are working with colleagues from Medicine and the Institute of Life Sciences — Dr Spiros Garbis, Professor Peter Smith and Professor Saul Faust — to develop laser-printed paper-based sensors that can be used to detect biomarkers in cancer patients and see how they are responding to their chemotherapy treatment. …
In a paper recently published in Clinical Cancer Research, investigators in the lab of Daniel Powell, PhD, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, demonstrated for the first time that a T cell activation molecule can be used as a biomarker to identify rare antitumor T cells in human cancers. The molecule, CD137, is a protein that is not normally found on the surface of resting T cells but its expression is induced when the T cell is activated…