Researchers Unravel Biochemical Factor Important In Tumor Metastasis
11/10/2011
A protein called "fascin" appears to play a critical transformation role in TGF beta mediated tumor metastasis, say researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., who published a study in a recent issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. According to study corresponding author Shengyu Yang, Ph.D...
In Childhood Cancer, Basic Biology Offers Clues To Better Treatments
11/10/2011
By studying tumor biology at the molecular level, researchers are gaining a deeper understanding of drug resistance and how to avoid it by designing pediatric cancer treatments tailored to specific mutations in a child's DNA. In a fruitful collaboration, pediatric oncologists and biochemists are targeting neuroblastoma, an often-deadly childhood cancer of the peripheral nervous system...
New Anti-Malaria Route Raises Vaccine Hope
11/10/2011
Using a technique devised at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, researchers found that the malaria parasite uses a unique receptor to gain entry and infect human red blood cells. They hope their discovery, which they describe in a study published online in Nature this week, opens a promising new route to the successful development of an anti-malaria vaccine...
Researchers in the United States have shown, for the first time, that it is possible to screen cancer patients for a broad range of cancer-causing genetic mutations as part of normal clinical practice. By identifying patients' individual genotypes within a relatively short time frame, doctors are able to target tumours with the most appropriate therapy...
Viagra Combats Malignant Melanoma
11/10/2011
At first it sounds like good news: The body's own immune system gets active in almost every cancer - however, not necessarily for the benefit of the patient. "We distinguish between two different types of immune response," says Professor Dr. Viktor Umansky, immunologist at DKFZ and University Medical Center Mannheim. "On the one hand, cells of the immune system specifically attack tumor cells...
Burkitt's Lymphoma Generally Rare But Common In Children In Equatorial Africa
11/10/2011
Although Burkitt's lymphoma is thankfully fairly rare in the general population, it is the most common form of malignancy in children in Equatorial Africa and is very frequent in immunocompromised persons, such as those suffering from AIDS. It is invariably accompanied by an increase in the expression of a particular gene, the so-called c-myc gene...
Molecular Corkscrew
11/10/2011
Human genetic material is constantly at risk of injury from the environment. Possible causes of damage include metabolic processes, chemical substances or ionizing radiation, such as X-radiation. Even a low dose of radiation can cause breaks in the DNA double helix. Normally, these DNA breaks are repaired by the body's own proteins, but they can also cause cancer if the repair is unsuccessful...
The Women Not Benefiting From Breast Cancer Treatment
11/09/2011
A study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, is one of the first of its kind to assess the benefits and improvements in medicine and technology for treating women with Breast Cancer through the last thirty years. Looking specifically at age subsets in the data, Benjamin Smith, M.D...
Vaccine For Metastatic Breast, Ovarian Cancer Shows Promise
11/09/2011
Treatment with a recombinant poxviral vaccine showed a positive response in both metastatic breast cancer and ovarian cancer, according to a trial published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "With this vaccine, we can clearly generate immune responses that lead to clinical responses in some patients," said lead researcher James Gulley, M.D...
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital is the first academic medical center in the United States to offer the recently-approved U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) diagnostic tool that tests melanoma patients for the BRAF mutation (which occurs in about half of all cases) and ultimately determines if they'll benefit from a new, potentially life-saving drug...