The role of folate, a B vitamin, and its synthetic form, folic acid, in the development and progression of breast cancer is highly controversial. Although some studies have found it may offer protection against breast cancer, recent studies have suggested that taking high amounts of folic acid may increase the risk of developing breast cancer…
Peter Sasieni and colleagues, from Queen Mary University of London, UK, examined the link between screening women aged 50 to 64 for cervical cancer and cervical cancer diagnosed at ages 65 to 83. Their study included all 65 to 83-year old women in England and Wales diagnosed with cervical cancer between 2007 and 2012, a total of 1,341 women. …
Breast cancer cells masquerade as neurons, allowing them to hide from the immune system, cross the blood-brain barrier and begin to form ultimately-deadly brain tumors, the researchers found. …
The paper, titled "HIV-1 Persistence in CD4+ T-Cells with Stem Cell-Like Properties," provides evidence that a particular T-cell type may help researchers better understand why HIV can persist despite treatment. Zurakowski’s co-authors include Mathias Lichterfeld, the paper’s lead author, and researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); Ragon Institute of MGH, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University; the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University; Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Zurakowski explained that HIV treatments do not kill infected cells…
The findings suggest that developing medications that activate PP2A, while avoiding perphenazine’s psychotropic effects, could help clinicians make much-needed headway against T-cell ALL, and perhaps other tumors as well. A study team led by Alejandro Gutierrez, MD, and A. …
Breast cancer risk rises in postmenopausal women as their body mass index climbs. The study found eating a diet high in tomatoes had a positive effect on the level of hormones that play a role in regulating fat and sugar metabolism. "The advantages of eating plenty of tomatoes and tomato-based products, even for a short period, were clearly evident in our findings," said the study’s first author, Adana Llanos, PhD, MPH, who is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Rutgers University. Llanos completed the research while she was a postdoctoral fellow with Electra Paskett, PhD, at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. …
Treatment given to shrink or eliminate a tumor before surgery is called neoadjuvant therapy. In some women with breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant therapy, no residual invasive cancer can be detected in breast tissue samples and lymph nodes removed during surgery. Emerging data suggest that these women, who are said to have had a pathologic complete response, have a greater chance of long-term survival compared with women who do not have a pathologic complete response. "Mutations in the PIK3CA gene are among the most common genetic aberrations in breast cancer," said Sibylle Loibl, M.D., professor at the German Breast Group in Neu-Isenburg, Germany. …
About 80 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States each year have tumors with high levels of hormone receptors. These tumors are fueled by the hormone estrogen. Anastrozole is a drug that prevents the body from making estrogen, and it has been used to treat postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer for more than 10 years. "We initiated the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study II (IBIS-II) Prevention trial to investigate whether anastrozole can be used effectively to prevent breast cancer," said Jack Cuzick, Ph.D., chairman of the IBIS-II Steering Committee. …
An increasing number of patients with triple-negative breast cancer are receiving chemotherapy before surgery, a treatment approach called neoadjuvant chemotherapy. …
"We have previously shown that high levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes [immune cells in a tumor] are predictive of response to trastuzumab and chemotherapy administered after surgery for early-stage, HER2-positive breast cancer using samples from patients enrolled on the randomized, adjuvant phase III clinical trial called the FinHER study," said Sherene Loi, M.D., Ph.D., medical oncologist and head of the Translational Breast Cancer Genomics Lab at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia. "Our new data further support the positive relationship between tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and better outcomes with trastuzumab therapy, this time in a cohort of patients with newly diagnosed HER2-positive breast cancer who received the therapy before surgery. …