Oncology

Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) have found a way to target drug-resistant esophageal cancer cells by exploiting the different energy needs of cancerous versus healthy cells. This breakthrough is now opening the doorway to new treatments for an otherwise lethal cancer. The findings of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study…

EPFL researchers have discovered that cancer cells use exosomes to communicate with each other and send information through the bloodstream. This breakthrough opens up new possibilities for the use of cancer immunotherapy techniques. “It was a huge surprise, we didn’t expect to find so many melanoma cancer cell markers in blood exosomes,” explains Hubert Girault,…

Normal cells have a complex system of checks and balances that regulate cell division. In cancer, the balance is tipped in favor of cell proliferation. This imbalance arises from increased levels or activity of oncoproteins (proteins that promote cell growth) or decreased levels or activity of tumor suppressors (proteins that limit cell growth). For example,…

A research team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that combining a specialized version of an antihypertension drug with immune checkpoint blockers could increase the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies. As described in their report published in PNAS, the combination treatment significantly improved tumor response…

For many women who thought they had beaten breast cancer, the news that it has roared back years later comes as an especially cruel diagnosis with no clear answers for why or how it recurs. Now a team of Duke Cancer Institute researchers has filled in some critically unknown details that could lead to potential…

University of Texas at Dallas scientists have demonstrated that the growth rate of the majority of lung cancer cells relates directly to the availability of a crucial oxygen-metabolizing molecule. In a preclinical study, recently published in Cancer Research, biologist Dr. Li Zhang and her team showed that the expansion of lung tumors in mice slowed when…

Treating breast tumors with two cancer drugs simultaneously may prevent endocrine resistance by attacking the disease along two separate gene pathways, scientists at the University of Illinois found in a new study. The two drugs used in the study, selinexor and 4-OHT, caused the cancer cells to die and tumors to regress for prolonged periods,…

11,000 people are predicted to die from acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in 2019, according to the American Cancer Society. The cancer starts in the bone marrow. There, mutated genes fail to prevent blood cells from replicating again and again and again, growing tumors. Chemotherapy helps two out of three patients achieve remission. And recently, drug…

A consortium of researchers led by Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center investigators have completed the largest analysis of a new gene fusion they believe is responsible for development of a wide spectrum of cancer types. They say their studies show that errant gene fusions in neuregulin-1 or NRG1, which are present in about 0.2 percent…

Every year more than 1.7 million women all over the world are diagnosed with breast cancer, with the disease ending fatally for around half a million patients. In the fight against breast cancer, research is being done into novel therapeutic approaches that are designed to target cancer cells more precisely and also activate the tumor-associated…

There could be new treatments on the horizon for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, a devastating form of brain cancer that afflicts young children and is currently incurable. Recent experiments in animal models of the disease have identified an experimental drug that effectively destroys DIPG cells. And a team of Rockefeller scientists just figured…