When researchers dialed up mutant Kras to spur pancreatic cancer growth in mice, and then shut it down, a group of recurrent tumors grew back independently of mutant Kras, reliant on a different oncogene. …
GRP78, a protein that protects cells from dying, is more abundant in cancer cells and tissue than in normal organs and is thought to play a role in helping pancreatic cancer cells survive and thrive. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found triptolide, an extract of the Chinese herb thunder god vine (Tirpterygium wilforii), suppresses GRP78, eventually leading to pancreatic cancer cell death. For mammals to use the proteins in our bodies, a process called protein folding must occur in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of cells. If proteins are not folded fast enough, unfolded proteins begin to build up and the cell becomes stressed…
What causes this accumulation of IAPP in pancreatic beta cells of people with diabetes has remained a mystery. But a team of researchers from the Larry L. Hillblom Islet Research Center led by Dr. Peter Butler, professor of medicine at UCLA, may have found an answer in autophagy, a process that clears damaged and toxic proteins from cell. …
“These results reinforce the need for care providers to better understand and communicate with patients about the possible long-term effects of bilateral RRSO,” said lead author Susan Domchek, MD, director of Penn’s Basser Research Center for BRCA. …
“This completely new way of thinking about ovarian cancer metastasis provides new potential avenues to predict and prevent recurrence or metastasis,” said senior author Anil Sood, M.D., professor of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine and Cancer Biology. The researchers found the circulating tumor cells (CTCs) rely on HER3, a less-famous sibling of the HER2 receptor protein prominent in some breast cancers, to find their way to the omentum, a sheet of tissue that covers and supports abdominal organs. HER3’s heavy presence on these cells makes it a biomarker candidate and suggests possible therapeutic options to thwart ovarian cancer progression, the researchers noted…
“Although dinaciclib has shown promising pre-clinical activity against a variety of tumor cells, and is currently undergoing phase I/II clinical trials in several malignancies, the mechanisms responsible for its anti-tumor activity are not fully understood,” says the study’s lead investigator Steven Grant, M.D., associate director for translational research, co-leader of the Developmental Therapeutics research program and Shirley Carter Olsson and Sture Gordon Olsson Chair in Oncology Research at Massey. …
The researchers modified a type of human immune cell — called T lymphocytes, or T cells — to target a molecule called CS1, which is found on more than 95 percent of myeloma cells, and to kill the cells. The researchers grew the modified cells in the lab to increase their numbers and then injected them into an animal model where they again killed human myeloma cells. The findings were published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research…
Life expectancy for HIV-infected people is now similar to uninfected people, but survival for HIV patients who develop cancer is not. While many studies have attempted to understand why HIV-infected cancer patients have worse outcomes, the new study, the largest of its size and scope, examined differences in cancer treatment as one potential explanation. For early-stage cancers that have the highest chance of cure with appropriate treatment, those with HIV were twice to four times as likely to not receive appropriate cancer treatment, the researchers found…
“Once a straightforward process, screening for cervical cancer is now increasingly complex. Absent better data about the advantages and disadvantages of Pap testing and cotesting in various settings, clinicians should help their patients make individual decisions about cervical cancer screening that incorporate their values and preferences. The designation of cotesting as the preferred approach in one set of screening guidelines may be premature,” Smith-McCune concludes…
The new studies find high activity with investigative drugs for advanced melanoma, and show for the first time that ipilimumab, a treatment already approved for advanced melanoma, can substantially decrease the risk of melanoma recurrence in certain patients with earlier-stage disease. In addition, another small trial reports that a one-time, personalized immunotherapy treatment induces complete and long-lasting remissions in a small number of women with advanced cervical cancer — a disease with little to no effective treatment options. …