In a report published on July 9 in the journal eLife, the Johns Hopkins scientists describe how a cluster of four phosphate groups, first found 13 years ago to bind to PTEN’s tail, controls its activity. …
In a paper appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the UTMB scientists describe cell-culture and mouse experiments demonstrating that colon cancer cells produce large amounts of hydrogen sulfide, and depend on the compound for survival and growth. "They love it and they need it," said UTMB professor Csaba Szabo, an author on the paper. "Colon cancer cells thrive on this stuff — our data show that they use it to make energy, to divide, to grow and to invade the host." The researchers connected the bulk of colon-cancer hydrogen sulfide production to a protein called CBS, which is produced at much higher levels in colon cancer cells than in non-cancerous tissue…
In laboratory studies of cells, investigators found that knocking down expression of FAM190A disrupts mitosis. In three pancreatic cancer-cell lines and a standard human-cell line engineered to be deficient in FAM190A, researchers observed that cells often had difficulty separating at the end of mitosis, creating cells with two or more nuclei. The American Journal of Pathology published a description of the work online May 17, which comes nearly a century after German scientist Theodor Boveri linked abnormal mitosis to cancer…
At the meeting Prof Sung Hoon Noh, a gastric surgeon from Yonsei University College of Medicine, Korea, presented 5-year follow-up from the phase III CLASSIC trial, which added combination chemotherapy to a standard surgical procedure called D2 gastrectomy. The chemotherapy regimen studied in the trial is called XELOX, which is a combination of the drugs capecitabine and oxaliplatin. …
Glioblastomas are the most common form of brain tumor in adults — and the most aggressive. Because of the way the tumors invasively infiltrate the brain, spreading like ivy, they cannot be removed fully by surgery. There is no cure, and few patients survive more than two to three years even with aggressive treatment. …
source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/27/woman-cries-tears-blood-in-condition-that-baffles-doctors/
The problematic therapy investigated involves suppression of the protein mTOR (mammalian target Of Rapamycin). MTOR plays an important role in regulating how cells process molecular signals from their environment, and it is observed as strongly activated in many solid cancers…
Their study was published in the online journal PLOS ONE in April. According to the authors, prostate cancer accounts for 20 percent of all cancers and 9 percent of cancer deaths. It is the most common cancer and was the second leading cause of cancer death in American men in 2012. "For most prostate cancer patients, the disease progresses relatively slowly," said study co-author Hui-Yi Lin, Ph.D., assistant member of the Chemical Biology and Molecular Medicine Program at Moffitt. …
source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/20/room-with-view-window-office-improves-sleep/
Leukemia often occurs due to chromosomal translocations, which are broken chromosomes that cause blood cells to grow uncontrollably. One gene that is involved in chromosomal translocations found at high frequency in childhood leukemia is the MLL1 (Mixed Lineage Leukemia 1) gene. Conventional chemotherapy is very ineffective at curing patients with this translocation, in contrast to other types of childhood leukemia, which are relatively curable. …