Nano-Sized Drug Transported Designed To Fight Disease
7/28/2011
Scientists seeking to improve cancer treatments have created a tiny drug transporter that maximizes its ability to silence damaging genes by finding the equivalent of an expressway into a target cell. The transporter, called a nanocarrier, is a lipid-based structure containing a piece of RNA. Lipids are fatty molecules that help maintain the structure of cell membranes...
Shed Light On Cancer Development With Sea Squirt Cells
7/28/2011
Delicate, threadlike protrusions used by cancer cells when they invade other tissues in the body could also help them escape control mechanisms supposed to eliminate them, a research group led by Bradley Davidson in the University of Arizona's department of molecular and cellular biology reports in Nature Cell Biology...
More Powerful "Lab-On-A-Chip" Created For Genetic Analysis
7/28/2011
UBC researchers have invented a silicone chip that could make genetic analysis far more sensitive, rapid, and cost-effective by allowing individual cells to fall into place like balls in a pinball machine...
Novel Blood-Cleaning Procedure For Kidney Transplant
7/28/2011
St. Michael's Hospital has become the first in North America to use a novel blood-cleaning procedure for a kidney patient that will allow him to receive a transplant from a donor with a different blood type. Transplants involving a donor and recipient with different blood types are rare...
Removing Sentinel Lymph Nodes With Breast Cancer Cells Does Not Improve Survival Outcomes
7/27/2011
Patients with early-stage breast cancer whose sentinel lymph nodes with microscopic cancer cells (occult cells) are removed do not have better survival outcomes, researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center reported in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). Study leader, Armando E. Giuliano, MD...
Gene Variants May Hold Key To Gateway Barret Esophagus Disease
7/27/2011
Three gene variants have been detected to be more profound in patients with esophageal cancer and Barret esophagus according to researchers. The incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) in the United States and Europe has increased a whopping 350% since 1970, with the cause uncertain. Esophageal adenocarcinoma is believed to be preceded by Barrett esophagus (BE)...
Are Cancers Newly Evolved Species?
7/27/2011
Cancer patients may view their tumors as parasites taking over their bodies, but this is more than a metaphor for Peter Duesberg, a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Cancerous tumors are parasitic organisms, he said...
Metastasis - the spread of cancer from the place where it first started to another place in the body - is the most common reason that cancer treatments fail. To metastasize, some types of cancer cells rely on invadopodia, cellular membrane projections that act like feet, helping them "walk" away from the primary tumor and invade surrounding tissues...
Cancer "Related" To 9/11 Attacks Denied Coverage Under Zadroga Act
7/27/2011
In a report released to the public this week, a panel reviewed scientific and medical findings on ground zero and decided there is insufficient evidence to add cancer to the list of trade center-related conditions. This means that those stricken with the life threatening disease cannot get health benefits under the Zadroga Act...
One Tiny Electron Could Be Key To Future Drugs That Repair Sunburn
7/27/2011
Researchers who have been working for nearly a decade to piece together the process by which an enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA have finally witnessed the entire process in full detail in the laboratory...