Cancer Research

The trigger was a gene. In service to humanity was a tiny fly, Drosophila spp aka fruit fly. This space pioneer that was flown to space first for radiation studies has been a model in genetics and cancer research. Some three quarters of human genes are found to have an equivalent in the fruit fly. Those pretty red eyes in the Drosophila photo have given us a clue to control cancer. Photo: University of Nebraska - Lincoln Just imagine: if you could find a gene that acts like switch for cancer, you could treat and cure cancer. What is cancer…

Starting with the tiny fruit fly, and then moving into mouse and human patients, researchers at VIB connected to the Center for Human Genetics (K.U. Leuven) say they have showed that the same gene suppresses cancer in all three. Reciprocally, switching off the gene leads to cancer. The scientists think there is a good chance that the gene can be switched on again with a drug. All of us begin our lives as one cell, which divides into two, four, eight … into a human of a few billion cells. Almost all cells in an adult human – skin cells, liver cells, eye lens cells, nerve cells, insulin-…

Scientists have discovered a mutation responsible for cancer progression, a finding with potential implications for the development of treatment against not one, but a series of cancer types, since this mutation can be linked to an abnormality recently discovered to exist in all malignancies.   The discovery has just been published in Nature Genetics.(1) Sonia Melo from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid and the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology in Porto, Portugal and colleagues from laboratories in Spain, Portugal, Finland, Japan and US, in the study now…

Cancer cells need a lot of nutrients to multiply and survive. While much is understood about how cancer cells use blood sugar to make energy, not much is known about how they get other nutrients. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered how the Myc cancer-promoting gene uses microRNAs to control the use of glutamine, a major energy source. The results, which shed light on a new angle of cancer that might help scientists figure out a way to stop the disease, appear Feb. 15 online at Nature. In their search to learn how Myc promotes cancer, the…

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say they have helped develop a new genomic test that can help clinicians predict which breast cancer patients are most likely to survive the disease and which treatments may be most effective in increasing those chances of survival. By specifically measuring the activity level of a small subset of the 20,000 plus genes that may be “turned on” or “turned off” within each tumor, this genomic test can give patients a more accurate picture of how their disease might progress. The relatively simple test can be performed in many hospital…

Laboratory work in animals showed limited activity when statins were given to prevent breast cancer, according to a report in the February issue of Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.  Statins, sold under brand names like Lipitor and Zocor, are primarily given to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, and prominent cardiologists almost universally agree that their use has changed the landscape.  The use of these drugs in cancer prevention has been more controversial. Results of epidemiology studies, which rely on looking…

Women who stopped taking the postmenopausal hormone combination of estrogen plus progestin experienced a marked decline in breast cancer risk which was unrelated to mammography utilization change, according to a study from the Women's Health Initiative led by a Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) investigator that was published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Breast cancer in the United States began to decline in 2003, after the Women's Health Initiative's initial findings that combined hormone therapy was related to higher risk of breast cancer and heart…

Biology exists in a physical world and cancer researchers are increasingly looking to include concepts of physics and mathematics in their efforts to understand how cancer develops -- and how to stop it. Traditional cancer biology involves taking a sample of cells and holding them in time so they can be studied. Then the researchers look at that slice of cells to understand what signals and pathways are involved. But that doesn't capture the full picture, says Sofia Merajver, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of the Breast Oncology Program at the University of Michigan Health System Comprehensive…

A 2005 Japan impotence study uses soft words about hard seats suggesting motorbike 'vibration may cause ED' and 'more studies are needed to determine the cause,' says patent-granted author Randall Dale Chipkar, but based upon limited information one cannot conclude motorcycle seats as causation for impotence. Bicycling or hard scooter seats on rough roads are much more rigorous on the groin rather than modern day cruising seats. Not to mention motorcycle rubber-mounted engines, sophisticated suspensions, smooth asphalt and contoured padded seats, Chipkar says. Subtle groin vibrations…

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