A University of Utah-led study reports that cancers select against a protein complex called the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC), and re-introduction of MPC in colon cancer cells impairs several properties of cancer, including growth. The research, which appears online on Oct…
In a cost analysis study based on typical patient characteristics, researchers used Medicare reimbursement codes to analyze allowable charges for eight different types of partial and whole breast irradiation therapies and treatment schedules available to early stage breast cancer patients. Taken together, these represent roughly 98% of the treatment options available to these patients. The cost of proton therapy when used for APBI, introduced to decrease overall treatment time and toxicity, was estimated at $13,833. Comparatively, WBI using IMRT (x-ray) therapy resulted in the highest Medicare charges at $19,599. …
“We hope our study will stimulate further progress in understanding circadian control of body physiology and aging-related dysfunction and ultimately lead to new strategies of treatment by targeting the circadian regulatory process, including non-drug treatment approaches,” said Changhao Wu, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Biochemistry and Physiology at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. To make this discovery, scientists used genetically modified mice in which a special wavelength of light was emitted when the clock proteins were produced in isolated bladder tissue. This light reported real-time clock expression and acted directly as a measure of peripheral clock expression…
Tanning is a widespread habit among young adults, especially non-Latino white women. …
The research, led by John Wagner, Jr., M.D., director of the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation program at the University of Minnesota and a researcher in the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, compared outcomes in children with acute leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome who received transplants of either one or two units of partially matched cord blood. The study was conducted at multiple sites nationwide, between December 2006 and February 2012. Coordinating the study was the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMT CTN) in collaboration with the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium and the Children’s Oncology Group. …
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supporting further clinical development of a new, improved, next-generation HPV vaccine. The vaccine was developed by a team led by Reinhard Kirnbauer from the Division of Immunodermatology at the MedUni Vienna in collaboration with Christina Schellenbacher and support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). The new vaccine had already demonstrated its excellent efficacy in a pre-clinical study in 2013…
The guidelines, published in the November 2014 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, include nine evidence-based recommendations that address issues related to multimodality care, including neoadjuvant therapy (chemotherapy and radiation therapy given prior to surgery). The goal of this therapy is to reduce the extent of cancer before an operation to maximize the chance of obtaining a cure. “Despite the widespread enthusiasm for multimodality therapy and the myriad of its aspects, currently available data for each component of care are not truly definitive,” said Guideline Task Force Chair, Alex G. Little, MD, from the University of Arizona in Tucson. …
The most common primary, malignant brain tumors in adults, called glioma, are formed from cells in the brain that are not nerve cells. These are serious tumors that lack efficient treatment and relapses are common. There are different types of glioma, classified according to an established system based on which cell type the tumor arises from. The most common gliomas are astrocytoma, which have their name from astrocytes, and oligodendroglioma, which are believed to arise from oligodendrocytes. …
Integrins are adhesion molecules expressed on the surface of cells. They play a crucial role in “integrating” the cell exterior and the interior cytoskeleton in cells. �The beta2-integrin family members are highly expressed in dendritic cells that are very important in immune responses. Dendritic cells pick up antigens in inflamed tissues and move to lymph nodes where they present the antigen to T cells and activate them to help fight infection…
In the presentation “Impact of Radioactive Iodine on Survival in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma,” Paritosh Suman, M.D. and colleagues from North Shore University Health System (Evanston, IL), explore the benefit of (RAI) treatment following surgery to remove the thyroid in patients with PTC, and whether survival benefit relates to tumor size. In a retrospective study of nearly 285,000 patients treated over 13 years, with a mean follow-up of 7 years, the authors found that 47% of patients had RAI therapy and it showed a small but statistically significant survival benefit regardless of the tumor size. Carrie Lubitz, M.D., M.P.H., Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), and coauthors previously described a novel blood-based assay for detecting the V600E mutation in the BRAF gene in patients with melanoma…