Cancer Research

Epidemiological studies indicate that obesity comes with an increased risk of developing cancer, and especially certain types such as liver cancer. Now, a group of researchers reporting in Cell say they can explain how obesity acts as a "bona fide tumor promoter." In the paper, researchers show that liver cancer is fostered by the chronic inflammatory state that goes with obesity, and two well known inflammatory factors in particular. The findings suggest that anti-inflammatory drugs that have already been taken by millions of people for diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's…

Introduction The most common form of  brain tumor in adults, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is not in fact a single disease but appears to be four distinct molecular subtypes, according to a study by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network. The researchers in this study also foundthat response to aggressive chemotherapy and radiation differed by subtype.The research team for TCGA is a collaborative effort funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), both parts of the National Institutes of Health. The Cancer Genome Atlas…

University of California, San Diego researchers say they have shown one way deadly brain tumors called gliomas evade drugs aimed at blocking the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a cell signaling protein that is crucial for tumor growth. They also say that a particular EGFR mutation is important not only to initiate the tumor, but for its continued growth as well. The findings appear this week in PNAS. In aggressive gliomas, extra copies of the EGFR gene are produced, and half of such tumors also carry an EGFR mutation, which ramps up tumor growth and portends a poor prognosis.…

Results from a study recently published in the Lancet Oncology found that testing for high-risk types of the human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA is significantly more effective in preventing invasive cervical cancer than cytology (Pap testing) alone. Two rounds of screening were performed in more than 90,000 women age 25-60. In phase one, women were randomly assigned to a control group with conventional cytology (Pap) only or to an intervention group where women had HPV DNA testing plus liquid-based cytology. In phase two, which was conducted two years later, with three to five years of follow-up…

Writing  in Nature Medicine, scientists from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington say they have demonstrated how to increase the number of  progenitor cells capable of rapid myeloid engraftment after cord blood transplantation. The discovery clears a major technical hurdle to making umbilical-cord-blood transplants more widely available for treating leukemia and other blood cancers. The relatively small number of stem cells in cord blood units (about one-10th the number a patient receives from a conventional transplant) has been a reason that…

Cancer-initiating stem cells that launch glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal type of brain tumor, also suppress an immune system attack on the disease, say scientists from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. In a paper featured in the Jan. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, the researchers demonstrate that this subset of tumor cells stifles the immune response in a variety of ways, but that the effect can be greatly diminished by encouraging the stem cells to differentiate into other types of brain cell. "We've known for years that glioblastoma and cancer patients…

 A new study conducted by Loyola University researchers could lead to new treatments for skin cancer that would shrink the tumors with a class of drugs called protein kinase inhibitors. The drugs would work by turning on a gene called protein kinase C (PKC), which prevents skin cells from becoming cancerous, said senior author Mitchell Denning, Ph.D. The study was published today in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. More than 1 million people in the United States are diagnosed with skin cancer each year. In the new study, researchers examined a type of skin cancer, called squamous…

Drinking green tea could modulate the effects of smoking on lung cancer, suggests a hospital-based, randomized study presented at the AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer. Researchers enrolled 170 patients with lung cancer and 340 healthy patients as controls.  The team administered questionnaires to obtain demographic characteristics, cigarette smoking habits, green tea consumption, dietary intake of fruits and vegetables, cooking practices and family history of lung cancer. They also performed genotyping on insulin-like growth factors as polymorphisms on the…

Fruits that contain anti-aromatase phytochemicals, such as pomegranates, may reduce the incidence of hormone-dependent breast cancer, according to research published in the January issue of Cancer Prevention Research. The authors say that pomegranate is enriched in a series of compounds known as ellagitannins that appear to be responsible for the fruit's anti-proliferative effect. "Phytochemicals suppress estrogen production that prevents the proliferation of breast cancer cells and the growth of estrogen-responsive tumors," said principal investigator Shiuan Chen, Ph.D., director of the…

 Researchers from UC San Diego, Santa Barbara and MIT have developed a "cocktail" of different nanometer-sized particles that work in concert within the bloodstream to locate, adhere to and kill cancerous tumors. The team says their work, appearing in an upcoming issue of PNAS, represents the first successful effort to employ a cooperative nanosystem to fight cancer. In their study, the researchers developed a system containing two different nanomaterials the size of only a few nanometers, or a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, that can be injected into the…