Cancer Research

In the last 40 years, health care has improved a great deal and we are living longer than ever. But the downside to longevity is more time for mutations to occur, and that means cancer. A new forecast in the British Journal of Cancer has an alarming finding - that half of people in the United Kingdom will get cancer - but it makes sense. The good news is that in the last 40 years, cancer survival has doubled and half of cancer survivors now live more than 10 years. The 50 percent number is not new, it was always projected, but rather than being in the future the new study says it is…

By inserting a specific strain of bacteria into the microenvironment of aggressive ovarian cancer, researchers transformed the behavior of tumor cells from suppression to immunostimulation - they attack themselves. Tumors protect themselves from attack by the immune system by generating an immunosuppressive microenvironment.  By introducing an attenuated and safe form of the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), created by Aduro Biotech Inc., they found that the attenuated bacteria is taken up by the immunosuppressive cells and transforms them from cells that protect the tumor into cells…

Inhibiting the action of a particular enzyme called polymerase theta, or PolQ, dramatically slows the growth of tumor cells tied to BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations which, in turn, are closely tied to breast and ovarian cancers, according to a new paper.  Senior investigator and NYU Langone cell biologist Agnel Sfeir, PhD, says that if further experiments prove successful, these findings could lead to a new class of targeted therapies against cancers with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. The researchers made their discovery about the polymerase theta enzyme while trying to…

There are ways non-scientists can assess if the research underlying big claims about cancer cures stack up. Rafael Anderson Gonzales Mendoza/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA By Nial Wheate, University of Sydney Cancer is big news; we often hear of some kind of cure for some version of the illness. But whether it’s a “natural cure” or a promising molecule on its way to becoming a new medicine, there are ways non-scientists can assess if the research underlying the big claims stacks up. Here are some tips to help you evaluate whether a cure claim is justifiable (spoiler: the evidence is rarely robust enough…

The actions of cells underpin new thinking about pancreatic cancer, which took the life of Apple's Steve Jobs. James Mitchell, CC BY-SA By Catherine Hogan, Cardiff University Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease. With a ten-year survival rate of just 1%, it has the poorest prognosis of all solid tumours. The main reason for this is that tumors of the pancreas largely develop without symptoms. Therefore, by the time many patients are diagnosed, the disease has advanced to a metastatic and incurable stage. Metastasis, which describes when cancer cells leave (or disseminate from) the…

An analysis of Danish women of reproductive age suggests that long-term use of hormonal contraceptives is associated with an increased risk of brain tumors.  Hormonal contraceptives, commonly called "the pill" in oral contraceptive, contain female sex hormones and are commonly referenced as the foundation of the "sexual revolution" in the 1960s because widespread usage has given women all over the world control over childbearing. In the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology paper, taking a hormonal contraceptive for at least five years is associated with a possible increase in a young…

We've all seen athletes on the sidelines of a football game with a mask over their mouths inhaling oxygen. It may seem odd that anyone stands around for 60 seconds, moves for 10 and then has to go sit on a bunch with an oxygen tank but oxygen is life, and the belief is greater oxygen in the blood will mean greater athletic performance. It may also mean more lung cancer, is it said. Why? People at higher elevations get less respiratory cancer than people at lower ones, for other cancers it is no different. Is that just epidemiology scrambling for curves to match again or is there something to…

Many cancer survivors face physical and mental challenges, such as sexual dysfunction or anxiety about getting cancer again or financial hardships, even decades after the treatment is ended.   Finding ways to help will become increasingly important because more cancer patients are living many years after treatment. The number of U.S. survivors is expected to top 19 million by 2024. While most survivors do well after treatment, some experience continuing problems that can significantly impair their quality of life well beyond the 5-year survival milestone. The problems and challenges can…

Can cancer biopsies spread more cancer? Some patients, and a few doctors think so.  Fine needle aspiration is a minimally invasive technique that uses a thin and hollow needle to extract a few cells from a tumor mass. Some contend that a biopsy can cause some cancer cells to spread and it has become a strongly-held belief, but is it true? It came about because some people who got biopsies did have cancer spread but it was so rare that answers were difficult to find. A recent study of more than 2,000 patients by researchers at Mayo Clinics concludes it is a myth and that patients who…

Researchers have identified mutations which occur at four specific sites in what is known as the "hTERT promoter" in more than 75 percent of glioblastomas and melanomas.   Telomerase is an enzyme largely responsible for the promotion of cell division. Within DNA, telomerase activation is a critical step for human carcinogenesis through the maintenance of telomeres. However, the activation mechanism during carcinogenesis - why cancer gets turned "on" - is not yet wholly understood. What is known is that transcriptional regulation of the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT)…