Tag Archives: united

New study reveals how to improve chemotherapy use in prostate cancer

“It was surprising to find that cabazitaxel functions differently than docetaxel in killing cancer cells, even though they’re both taxanes,” says senior author Karen Knudsen, Ph.D., Interim Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and a professor of cancer biology at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. “It shows that we may not be taking full advantage of this next generation taxane in the clinic.” For years, docetaxel has been the only effective chemotherapy for men whose cancer was no longer responding to hormone treatments…

Potential new breathalyzer for lung cancer screening

Their work, described in a paper published this week in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, from AIP Publishing, demonstrates the potential of the device to be used as a breathalyzer for early lung cancer detection — possibly a safe and effective method of detecting cancer early that may save lives. According to the researchers, the laboratory results are promising, but the device would still need to prove effective in clinical trials before its widespread adoption as a diagnostic tool. “Our results show that the device can discriminate different kinds and concentrations of cancer related volatile organic compounds with a nearly100 percent accurate rate,” said Jin-can Lei, the primary researcher and a postdoc from the College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Chongqing University. “This would also be a rapid method in that the entire detection process in our experiment only takes about 20 minutes.” Based on a small, circular plate called fluorescent cross-responsive sensor array, a specially-designed rotary gas chamber and a data collection and processing system, the device can detect lung cancer related gases at very low concentration, or below 50 parts per billion (ppb), showing a potential to identify lung cancer at the early stage. …

Women with atypical hyperplasia are at higher risk of breast cancer

Atypical hyperplasia of the breast is a precancerous condition found in about one-tenth of the over 1 million breast biopsies with benign findings performed annually in the United States. Viewed under a microscope, atypia contains breast cells that are beginning to grow out of control (hyperplasia) and cluster into abnormal patterns (atypical)…

Smoking still causes large proportion of cancer deaths in the United States

More than 30 years ago, a groundbreaking analysis by famed British researchers, Richard Doll and Richard Peto, calculated that 30 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States were caused by smoking. Since that time, no new estimate of this percentage has been published in the scientific literature. …

Toughest breast cancer may have met its match: Protein inhibitor makes cell susceptible to chemotherapy

A report of their findings was published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Dec. 1. Triple-negative breast cancers account for about 20 percent of all breast cancers in the United States, and 30 percent of all breast cancers in African-American women…

Gene discovered that reduces risk of stroke

Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, together with an international team from across the United States and Europe, have found that people with a specific variant of a gene, known as PHACTR1, are at reduced risk of suffering cervical artery dissection, which is caused by a tear in an artery that leads to the brain. The new discovery, published in the journal Nature Genetics, could lead to new treatments and prevention strategies for the disease, which is a major cause of stroke in young adults. The same gene variant has also been identified as a protector against migraines and affects the risk of heart attack. Professor Pankaj Sharma, from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, said: “This is an important breakthrough…

New insights into breast cancer spread could yield better tests and treatments — ScienceDaily

According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 232,000 American women developed breast cancer last year and nearly 40,000 women died from the disease. It is the most common cancer among women in the United States. Most breast cancer deaths occur because the cancer has spread, or metastasized, which means that cells in the primary tumor have invaded blood vessels and traveled via the bloodstream to form tumors elsewhere in the body…

The ‘dirty’ side of soap: Triclosan, a common antimicrobial in personal hygiene products, causes liver fibrosis and cancer in mice

“Triclosan’s increasing detection in environmental samples and its increasingly broad use in consumer products may overcome its moderate benefit and present a very real risk of liver toxicity for people, as it does in mice, particularly when combined with other compounds with similar action,” said Robert H. Tukey, PhD, professor in the departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Pharmacology. Tukey led the study, together with Bruce D…

Novel molecular imaging drug offers better detection of prostate cancer — ScienceDaily

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed non-skin cancer in the United States, and it is second only to lung cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths in American men. An estimated 233,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2014, and an estimated 29,000 will die of the disease. More than 2 million men are currently living with prostate cancer in the United States…