Cambridge, MASS. — Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have shown that they can deliver the cancer drug cisplatin much more effectively and safely in a form that has been encapsulated in a nanoparticle targeted to prostate tumor cel…
Using biological samples taken from patients and state-of-the-art biochemical techniques, a Florida State University researcher is working to identify a variety of “biomarkers” that might provide earlier warnings of the presence of breast and pr…
In a proof of principal study in mice, scientists at Johns Hopkins and the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) have shown that a set of genetic instructions encased in a nanoparticle can be used as an “ignition switch” to rev up gene activity tha…
This past summer saw a revolution in melanoma therapy. Patients whose melanoma lesions contain a mutation in the BRAF gene were successfully treated with a BRAF-specific inhibitor, PLX4032. Reports of the drug trial described shrinking tumors …
What makes cancer cells so dangerous is that they grow in an unregulated way and proliferate much faster than other cells. The proteasome, a large protein complex, plays a key role in this process: By breaking down used proteins for recycling, i…
When it comes to health care blue lights, are usually most useful on the top of ambulances but now new research led by the University of Warwick has found a way to use blue light to activate what could be a highly potent platinum-based cancer treatm…
Athens, Ga. — Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered a central switch that controls whether cells move or remain stationary. The misregulation of this switch may play a role in the increased movement of tumor cells and in the agg…
Scientists are proposing an international effort, on the scale of the Human Genome Project (HGP), to identify all the proteins present in cancer cells. HGP was the international scientific research project that identified and mapped all the genes in…
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have identified a compound that could be used to starve cancers of their sugar-based building blocks. The compound, called a glutaminase inhibitor, has been tested on laboratory-cultured, sugar-hungry brain cancer cel…
United States and Japanese researchers have identified a key step in metabolic pathways linked to diabetes and cancer. The study on activation of the protein complex TORC 2 was published online in the journal Current Biology Oct. 28.
TORC 2 activa…
Laparoscopic or ‘keyhole’ surgery is a safe, effective way of removing bowel tumours and should be offered to all patients undergoing surgery for colorectal cancer, according to researchers from the University of Leeds.
Patients who have laparosco…
It is hard to believe that they belong to the same species: The large, long-lived queen bee is busy producing offspring throughout her lifetime. The much smaller worker bees, on the other hand, gather food, take care of the beehive, look after and f…