Tag Archives: virginia

Gene Mutations and Process for How Kidney Tumors Develop identified

“These studies, which were performed in collaboration with Genentech Inc., identify novel therapeutic targets and suggest that predisposition to kidney cancer across species may be explained, at least in part, by the location of tumor suppressor genes with respect to one another in the genome,” said Dr. James Brugarolas, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Developmental Biology, who leads UT Southwestern’s Kidney Cancer Program at the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center. The scientists’ findings are outlined in separate reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Genetics. …

Common anesthetic can reduce chronic pain after mastectomy — ScienceDaily

“Unfortunately, chronic pain is a condition that many breast cancer patients endure after mastectomy,” said Mohamed Tiouririne, M.D., lead author and associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “Our findings indicate that intravenous (I.V.) lidocaine can protect mastectomy patients from developing chronic pain, possibly due to the anti-inflammatory effects associated with the medication.” In the study, 61 women who underwent mastectomy were randomly divided into two groups…

Promising new cancer therapy uses molecular ‘Trash Man’ to exploit a common cancer defense

Cancer therapies cause unwanted proteins to accumulate in cancer cells, which can trigger a form of cell suicide known as apoptosis. To survive, the cells break down the excess proteins through autophagy, from a Greek term meaning “self eating.” In a study recently published in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology, scientists induced autophagy using the anti-tumor drug obatoclax while simultaneously blocking the production of p62 using a drug known as a cyclin-dependant kinase (CDK) inhibitor. …

Medicine looking deeper into vital differences between women, men

That’s hardly an earth-shattering observation, but the fact is that, aside from the most obvious physical differences between the sexes, medicine has traditionally treated women as if they were merely smaller men. “When we look closely, we tend to find differences” between men and women, said Sarah L. Berga, M.D., professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology and vice president for women’s health services at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “But for most of the past, we never looked.” That started to change in the late 1980s, when physicians and researchers recognized that women’s health encompassed more than those conditions unique to females; that women’s experiences with gender-common conditions and the treatments for them often differed significantly from those of men…

Multiple myeloma, myeloid leukemia therapies could be enhanced by experimental drug

“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. …