Tag Archives: william

Role of gene mutations involved in more than 75 percent of glioblastomas, melanomas

The research is published this month in the online journal PLOS ONE and is authored by Brad Chaires, Ph.D., John Trent, Ph.D., Robert Gray, William Dean, Ph.D., Robert Buscaglia, Shelia Thomas and Donald Miller, M.D., Ph.D. Telomerase is an enzyme largely responsible for the promotion of cell division. Within DNA, telomerase activation is a critical step for human carcinogenesis through the maintenance of telomeres. …

Two drugs before surgery help women with triple-negative breast cancer, research shows

“We found that adding either carboplatin or bevacizumab to standard preoperative chemotherapy increased pathologic complete response rates for women with basal-like cancers — that is, it increased the proportion of women who had no residual cancer detected at surgery. At the same time, we found that while carboplatin had a similar effect in the smaller group of triple-negative patients with nonbasal-like cancers, adding bevacizumab actually decreased response rates for women with nonbasal-like cancers,” says William M…

Bitter food but good medicine from cucumber genetics

“You don’t eat wild cucumber, unless you want to use it as a purgative,” said William Lucas, professor of plant biology at the University of California, Davis and coauthor on the paper to be published Nov. 28 in the journal Science. That bitter flavor in wild cucurbits — the family that includes cucumber, pumpkin, melon, watermelon and squash — is due to compounds called cucurbitacins. The bitter taste protects wild plants against predators. …

Ovarian cancer patients may benefit from pelvic radiotherapy

“Despite the intense therapeutic and surgical regimen typically used to treat ovarian cancer, outcomes remain poor,” said William Small Jr., MD, chair, Department of Radiation Oncology, LUHS. “This study provided encouraging preliminary results for the use of RT in women with ovarian cancer.” The study evaluated 56 patients with ovarian clear cell adenocarcinoma (CCA), an aggressive form of ovarian cancer that is more likely to be resistant to chemotherapy and to have a poorer prognosis than other forms of this disease. …

CT lung screening appears cost-effective

“This provides evidence, given the assumptions we used, that it is cost-effective,” said Ilana Gareen, assistant professor (research) of epidemiology in Brown University’s School of Public Health and second author on the new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Four years ago, the vast NLST showed that low-dose helical CT scanning reduced mortality from lung cancer by 20 percent compared to chest X-rays. The study involved more than 53,000 smokers aged 55-74…

Trial results reveal first targeted treatment to boost survival for esophageal cancer

Up to one in six patients with esophageal cancer were found to have EGFR duplication in their tumor cells and taking the drug gefitinib, which targets this fault, boosted their survival by up to six months, and sometimes beyond. This is the first treatment for advanced esophageal cancer shown to improve survival in patients whose initial course of chemotherapy treatment has failed. It is also the first time a targeted treatment of any kind has proved effective in this disease, although chemotherapy and some targeted drugs have shown benefit in the second line treatment of other cancers of the digestive system including stomach cancer…

Anti-cancer drug effective against common stem cell transplant complication

“Bortezomib helped a group of patients who desperately needed a treatment, having failed multiple different therapies,” said UC Davis hematologist and associate professor Mehrdad Abedi, lead author on the paper. “The drug fights chronic graft-versus host disease, and unlike other GVHD therapies such as steroid, cyclosporine or mycophenolate, it treats chronic GVHD without dampening the graft-versus-tumor effect, which can be critically important to help patients avoid relapse. In fact, because bortezomib is an anti-cancer drug, it potentially attacks cancer cells in its own right.” The trial results were published in October in the journal Blood. Chronic GVHD strikes patients who have received stem cell transplants from donors, commonly called allogeneic transplants. …