Tag Archives: weill-cornell

Aggressive lymphoma: Low doses of approved drug switches on pathway that allows chemotherapy to kill cancer

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, who led the study published in Cancer Discovery, say their strategy has the potential to change the standard of care for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) — and possibly other kinds of tumors. The targeted drug they used, azacitidine, is designed to reawaken molecular mechanisms that typically trigger cell death but are switched off as cancer — including lymphoma — progresses. The research team discovered that pretreating aggressive lymphoma with azacitidine enables the death signal to turn back on when chemotherapy triggers it. In a proof-of-concept, Phase 3 study of 12 high-risk DLBCL patients led by Dr. …

Novel drug shuts down master protein key to lymphoma

In the journal Cell Reports, published today online, the scientists describe how the powerful master regulatory transcription factor Bcl6 regulates the genome, ensuring that aggressive lymphomas survive and thrive. They also show how the Bcl6 inhibitor, developed at Weill Cornell, effectively gums up the protein, stopping it from working…

Even healthy-looking smokers have early cell damage which destroys necessary genetic programming

The study, published today in the journal Stem Cells, compared cells that line the airway from healthy nonsmokers with those from smokers with no detectable lung disease. The smokers’ cells showed early signs of impairment, similar to that found in lung cancer — providing evidence that smoking causes harm, even when there is no clinical evidence that anything is wrong. "The study doesn’t say these people have cancer, but that the cells are already starting to lose control and become disordered," says the study’s senior investigator, Dr. …

Master regulator that drives majority of lymphoma discovered

The study, reported in Cancer Cell, found that the EZH2 protein the drug agents inhibited is a powerful regulatory molecule in B-cells, and a key driver of cancer in these immune cells. The study’s lead investigator, Weill Cornell Medical College’s Dr. Ari Melnick, suggests that combining an EZH2 inhibitor with another related targeted therapy may offer a much improved treatment for follicular lymphoma, a cancer that currently has no cure, as well as a non-toxic alternative to chemotherapy for at least a third of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas. Because these two lymphomas account for 70 percent of adult lymphomas, Dr. …