Cancer Research

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine & School of Engineering and Applied Science have discovered a better way to deliver drugs to tumors. By using a cylindrical-shaped carrier they were able sustain delivery of the anticancer drug paclitaxel to an animal model of lung cancer ten times longer than that delivered on spherical-shaped carriers. These findings have implications for drug delivery as well as for better understanding cylinder-shaped viruses like Ebola and H5N1 influenza. Nanospheres in flow are readily captured non-specifically by cells, as imaged in…

For several types of cancer, persistently high levels of the soluble factor TGF-beta in the blood after surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy correlate with increased risk of early metastasis and a poor prognosis. Using a mouse model of breast cancer, researchers from Vanderbilt University have now generated evidence to suggest that treatment with TGF-beta inhibitors might help such patients. In the study, which appears online on April 5 in advance of publication in the May print issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Carlos Arteaga and colleagues show that treating mice with…

An international team led by researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has identified a genetic variant that is a major contributor to small size in dogs. The findings appear in the April 6, 2007 issue of the journal Science. “The identification and characterization of a key genetic variant that accounts for differences in dog size is particularly exciting because the underlying gene is present in all dogs and other diverse species, including humans,” said Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D., scientific director of the NHGRI…

Inherent gender differences – instead of more sun exposure – may be one reason why men are three times more likely than women to develop certain kinds of skin cancer, say researchers at Ohio State University Medical Center. Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of skin cancer, accounting for nearly 200,000 new cases in the United States each year. While occurring more often than melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma is not nearly as worrisome. Still, it can be lethal in some patients, especially those with suppressed immune systems, including transplant recipients or people who…

Treatment of mice with a ‘friendly’ bacteria, normally found in the soil, altered their behavior in a way similar to that produced by antidepressant drugs, reports research published in the latest issue of Neuroscience. These findings, identified by researchers at the University of Bristol and colleagues at University College London, aid the understanding of why an imbalance in the immune system leaves some individuals vulnerable to mood disorders like depression. Dr Chris Lowry, lead author on the paper from Bristol University, said: "These studies help us understand how the body…

By recognizing sugars, a technique developed by University of Michigan analytical chemist Kristina Hakansson sets the stage for new cancer diagnosis and treatment options. A growing body of evidence points to assemblies of sugars called glycans attached to proteins on cancer cell surfaces as accomplices in the growth and spread of tumors. Researchers have been keen to characterize these glycans, but traditional analytical methods have not been sufficient. Now, Hakansson's research group has demonstrated that their technique can be used to identify and structurally characterize glycans.…

Scientists have identified three different signals that indicate damage to chloroplasts— the photosynthetic factories of plant cells that give plants their green color —but little is known about how the signal gets passed on to the nucleus. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies made a big step towards explaining how chloroplasts let a cell's nucleus know when things start to go wrong at the periphery so nuclear gene expression can be adjusted accordingly. Multiple distress signals converge on a single pathway and channel the information to a nuclear master switch, the…

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University has analyzed the simplest known biological clock and figured out what makes it tick. The results of their analysis are published in the March 27 issue of the journal Public Library of Science Biology. Biological clocks are microscopic pacemakers. They are found in everything from pond scum to human beings and appear to help organize a dizzying array of biochemical processes. A traveler experiences jet lag when his or her internal clock becomes out of synch with the environment. Seasonal Affective Disorder, some types of…

Researchers believe they have solved a mystery that has puzzled evolutionary scientists for years ... if 'good' genes spread through the population, why are individuals so different?  The so-called 'lek paradox', that sexually-selecting species like humans should have much less individuality than is the case, has been seized upon by creationists as an argument that Darwin's theories are fundamentally flawed. The problem is that if females select the most attractive mates, the genes responsible for attractive features should spread quickly through a population, resulting in males…

For the first time, researchers have used adult bone marrow stem cells to regenerate healthy human liver tissue, according to a study published in the April issue of the journal Radiology. When large, fast-growing cancers invade the liver, some patients are unable to undergo surgery, because removing the cancerous tissue would leave too little liver to support the body. Researchers at Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany, used adult bone marrow stem cells to help quickly regenerate healthy liver tissue, enabling patients to eventually undergo a surgical resection. “Our study…