Cancer Research
Laboratory tests conducted at Texas A&M AgriLife Research have found that treatments with peach extract inhibit breast cancer metastasis in mice, likely due to the mixture of phenolic compounds present in the peach extract, they write in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.
In the western hemisphere, breast cancer is the most common malignant disease for women, he said. In the U.S. last year, the American Cancer Society estimated about 232,340 new cases of invasive breast cancer among women. Most of the complications and high mortality associated with breast cancer are due to…
Daniel H. Conrad, professor of microbiology and immunology at the
Virginia Commonwealth University
School of Medicine, and colleagues have uncovered a new connection between allergy and cancer that could potentially lead to therapies involving common antihistamines.
In the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, their study found that histamine, a component of the immune system that responds to allergens and foreign pathogens and is also linked to inflammation, plays a role in protecting tumors from the immune system. By blocking the production of histamine in animal models, the…
Archaeologists have found the oldest complete example in the world of a human with metastatic cancer in a 3,000 year-old skeleton.
Cancer is one of the world's leading causes of death today but it remains almost absent from the archaeological record compared to other pathological conditions, giving rise to speculation that the disease is mainly a product of modern living and increased longevity. These findings suggest that cancer is not only a modern disease but was already present in the Nile Valley in ancient times. The researchers say the discovery will help to explore…
Cryoablation, also called cryosurgery and cryotherapy, is an energy-based, minimally invasive surgical technique that has been investigated to treat a variety of diseases including cancer. It involves freezing the diseased tissue to subzero temperature to induce irreversible damage.
A new paper finds that in combination with free doxorubicin (fDOX) and nanoparticle-encapsulated doxorubicin (nDOX) nanodrug-based chemotherapy, cryoablation provides an effective strategy to eliminate cancer stem-like cells (CSCs) the root of cancer resistance and metastasis.
Cryoablation…
A faster and less expensive form of radiotherapy, called Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), for treating prostate cancer may come with a higher rate of urinary complications.
The standard external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer is currently intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Stereotactic body radiotherapy delivers a greater dose of radiation per treatment than IMRT so patients receiving SBRT can complete an entire course of treatment in one to two weeks, compared to seven to nine weeks for IMRT.
A new study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by…
The most popular test for ovarian cancer reports false-positives in 94 of 100 diagnosed cases but researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University College London have developed a method able to halve that.
When fully developed, the new test will spare a significant number of women from unnecessary worry and further testing. Furthermore, global health care providers stand to save substantial sums – just by including a test on a certain sugar molecule in tandem with the currently prevailing diagnostic test.
Ola Blixt is a chemical glycobiology professor at the Department of…
Low oxygen conditions often persist inside tumors, but they are sufficient to initiate a molecular chain of events that transform breast cancer cells from being rigid and stationery to mobile and invasive.
A recent study highlighted the importance of hypoxia-inducible factors in promoting breast cancer metastasis.
"High levels of RhoA and ROCK1 were known to worsen outcomes for breast cancer patients by endowing cancer cells with the ability to move, but the trigger for their production was a mystery," says senior author Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., the C. Michael Armstrong Professor of…
It's not often that cancer research gets compared to gridlock traffic in New York City but it makes some sense. If we are driving from Florida, we might take I-95 to get there, but if we are driving from California, we would take I-80. It's a matter of circumstance and then some variables based on choice.
John McDonald, a professor in the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta
, says that cancers also have lots of routes to get to the same disease and that assessing the route to cancer on a case-by-case basis might make more sense than the way it is done now.
A…
A study led by Manchester scientists has shown promising results for a new treatment approach in follicular lymphoma.
Follicular lymphoma is a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a blood cancer, that usually develops slowly but the majority of patients are diagnosed when their disease is already at an advanced stage.
Recent improvements in treatment have included the use of antibodies to specifically target the tumour cells and to stimulate the patient's own immune system to attack their tumor. The use of such antibodies has improved treatment response, but unfortunately most patients still…
The precautionary principle says when it comes to health, you err on the side of caution, and a well-publicized effort to get annual screening for breast cancer paid off - but it hasn't lowered mortality rates in women aged 40-59. An annual physical examination does just fine, according to a 25-year study.
With the Affordable Care Act now in effect in the US, government will be looking for ways to reduce care, so the fact that 22% of screen detected breast cancers were over-diagnosed, representing one over-diagnosed breast cancer for every 424 women who received screening in the trial, means…