Cancer Research

Men with low levels of the male sex hormone testosterone need not fear that testosterone replacement therapy will increase their risk of prostate cancer, according to an analysis of more than 250,000 medical records. In the study, researchers found that, as a group, men prescribed testosterone for longer than a year had no overall increase in risk of prostate cancer and, in fact, had their risk of aggressive disease reduced by 50 percent. "Based on our findings, physicians should still be watching for prostate cancer risk factors -- such as being over the age of 40, having African-American…

With a cure rate approaching 90 percent, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of childhood cancer, is one of the big "success stories" of modern cancer treatment. Yet up to 20 percent of patients with a high risk of relapse are not cured, which could change with the results from a clinical trial showing that high doses of the commonly-used chemotherapy drug methotrexate increases the survival rate for these patients.  The high-dose  protocol outlined in the study - along with a parallel finding that the steroid decadron is beneficial for younger (but not older)…

A new study finds that a vegetarian diet likely led to a mutation that may make people more likely to get heart disease and colon cancer. Using reference data from the 1000 Genomes Project, the team discovered that a mutation called rs66698963 in the FADS2 gene used for making long chain polyunsaturated fats like arachidonic acid is linked to inflammatory diseases like heart disease and colon cancer -- but only if they didn't follow a balanced diet to offset the risk. That is better scientific methodology than every single International Agency for Research on Cancer monograph produced since…

Women who sunbathe are likely to live longer than those who avoid the sun, even though sunbathers are at an increased risk of developing skin cancer. This paradox baffles oncologists and has suggested that the war on sunshine has been unjustified. An analysis of information on 29,518 Swedish women may provide some answers. The women were followed for 20 years and the data revealed that longer life expectancy among women with active sun exposure habits was related to a decrease in heart disease and non-cancer/non-heart disease deaths, causing the relative contribution of death due to cancer to…

Researchers have turned skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells that destroy the brain tumors known as glioblastoma – a discovery that may offer a new and more effective treatment for the disease.  The survival rate beyond two years for a patient with a glioblastoma is 30 percent because it is so difficult to treat. Even if a surgeon removes most of the tumor, it’s nearly impossible to get the invasive, cancerous tendrils that spread deeper into the brain and inevitably the remnants grow back. Most patients die within a year and a half of their diagnosis. The latest technique is based…

Two small structural elements, called decorin and lumican, could be decisive in the development of a resistance to the drugs currently used for treating glioblastoma multiforme, such as temozolamide.   Glioblastoma multiforme is the most frequent and aggressive tumor that affects the central nervous system, and it has a low survival rate: less than a year and a half after being diagnosed. The researchers have proven that proteoglycans (the cells' structural elements), called decorin (DCN) and lumican (LUM), could be decisive in the behavior and development of a resistance to the…

For half a century, cancer researchers have struggled with a confusing paradox: If cancer is caused by the occurrence and accumulation of cancer-causing (oncogenic) mutations over time, young children should get less cancer since they have fewer mutations. So why do young children have a higher incidence of leukemia than teenagers and young adults?  A University of Colorado Cancer Center paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes a solution. Using a computational model describing the population dynamics of blood stem cells that give rise to…

A gene believed to suppress the growth and spread of cancer has the opposite effect in some forms of colorectal cancer, researchers have found.  Sprouty2 is the gene and the new paper studied it in cancer cell models, mouse models and human biopsy samples. Using different molecular methods, the researchers found that the gene functions differently in colorectal cancer than in other types of cancers. Sprouty2 is known to block molecular circuits to prevent cancer cells from growing and spreading to other parts of the body. However, the researchers found that in colorectal cancer, Sprouty2…

Recurrence of HER2-positive breast cancer after treatment may be due to a specific and possibly cancer-induced weakness in the patient's immune system -- a weakness that in principle could be corrected with a HER2-targeted vaccine -- according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Results of the study show that T cells from patients whose breast cancer had recently recurred showed far weaker response to the HER2 receptor protein, compared to T cells from patients whose breast cancer had not recurred over a long period following treatment. The…

Nearly one in four publicly sponsored cancer clinical trials fail to enroll enough participants, which means progress is impeded and a lot of time and money has been wasted. What accounts for that? Patients grumble about cost - if you go to Stanford Medical for a consultation about a trial they are doing, you are likely to get a large bill just for the visit - and then there is the risk of side effects that get so much media attention. If real medicines that survived 12 years and $2 billion end up with lawsuits for harm, untested treatments or techniques are likely to be worse. And Big Pharma…