Golden Bullet For Cancer? Nanoparticles Provide Targeted Version Of Photothermal Therapy For Cancer

Infrared images made while tumors were irradiated with a laser show that in nanocage-injected mice (left), the surface of the tumor quickly became hot enough to kill cells. In buffer-injected mice (right), the temperature barely budged. This specificity is what makes photothermal therapy so attractive as a cancer therapy. (Credit: WUSTL)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 16, 2010) — In a lecture he delivered in 1906, the German physician Paul Ehrlich coined the term Zuberkugel, or "magic bullet," as shorthand for a highly targeted medical treatment.

Magic bullets, also called silver bullets, because of the folkloric belief that only silver bullets can kill supernatural creatures, remain the goal of drug development efforts today.

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Long-Promised Cancer Revolution Begins

From New Scientist:

A personalised blood test that can identify tumour DNA could be the first step towards a long-promised revolution in the way cancer is treated.

In the short term, the test - reported by Victor Velculescu of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues in Science Translational Medicine - could be used to spot cancer recurrence before tumour growth shows up on scans, meaning that treatment could be started earlier.

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Red Wine, Chocolate Among Foods That Fight Cancer

More great news for chocolate lovers: it helps fight cancer. Source: The Australian

From The Australian/AFP:

CABERNET and chocolate are potent medicine for killing cancer, according to new research.

Red grapes and dark chocolate join blueberries, garlic, soy, and teas as ingredients that starve cancer while feeding bodies, Angiogenesis Foundation head William Li said at the Technology Entertainment Design Conference in Long Beach, California.

``We are rating foods based on their cancer-fighting qualities,'' Li said. ``What we eat is really our chemotherapy three times a day.''

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Scientists Synthesize Unique Family of Anti-Cancer Compounds

Image of one of the kinamycin compounds synthesized by Yale researchers destroying ovarian cancer cells (the spherical objects) in less than 48 hours in lab tests. (Credit: Gil Mor)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2010) — Yale University scientists have streamlined the process for synthesizing a family of compounds with the potential to kill cancer and other diseased cells, and have found that they represent a unique category of anti-cancer agents. Their discovery appears in this week's online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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An Early Warning System For Cancer

Image: Immune tracer: This image shows the overexpression of cancer-associated glycan structures (green) on proteins in cancer cells. The cells’ nuclei are stained in blue. Credit: Kirstine Lavrsen

From Technology Review:

Autoantibodies could alert doctors to cancer development.

A new screening tool developed by scientists in Denmark may help detect the earliest stages of cancer by taking advantage of the body's own defenses. The researchers constructed a microarray system that analyzes patients' blood for a specific class of immune agents called autoantibodies. These are agents that attack the body's own tissue, targeting what they perceive as "foreign" cells, such as specific molecules on the surface of tumors.

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Soft Drink Consumption May Increase Risk Of Pancreatic Cancer

Researchers found that there was a correlation between drinking sugary drinks and pancreatic cancer Photo: CORBIS

From The Telegraph:

Drinking two or more soft drinks a week can double the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, a new study claims.

Researchers found that there was a correlation between drinking sugary drinks and the cancer which affects around 7,000 people in the UK every year.

They believe that the high sugar content increases the amount of insulin the pancreas produces which could be why they are more prone to cancer.

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Experts: 40% Of Cancers Are Preventable

Lung cancer cell
Visuals Unlimited / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

(LONDON) — About 40 percent of cancers could be prevented if people stopped smoking and overeating, limited their alcohol, exercised regularly and got vaccines targeting cancer-causing infections, experts say.

To mark World Cancer day on Thursday, officials at the International Union Against Cancer released a report focused on steps that governments and the public can take to avoid the disease.

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Cancer Risk Increases With Blood Sugar

From The Telegraph:

Up to one in six Britons with high blood-sugar levels faces a greater danger of developing cancer, according to new research.

Excess blood sugar means someone could be more likely both to develop cancer and also to die from it, according to research in the Public Library of Science journal.

Women were more vulnerable than men and high blood sugar is linked o a range of different cancers for each gender, it found.

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Troubleshooters That Block Cancer

From The BBC:

Scientists have shown how a family of "limpet-like" proteins play a crucial role in repairing the DNA damage which can lead to cancer.

They hope the finding could pave the way for a new type of drug which could help kill cancer cells, and promote production of healthy replacements.

The proteins seem to have a remarkable ability to zero in on damaged areas.

The breakthrough, uncovered independently by two teams, appears in the journal Nature.

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The Big Question: Has A Key Breakthrough Been Made In The Search For A Cure For Cancer?

From The Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

British scientists announced yesterday that they have sequenced a "cancer genome" for the first time. It means they have identified all of the many thousands of genetic mistakes that make a tumour cell different from a healthy cell taken from the same cancer patient.

Not all of these mistakes, or DNA mutations, were involved in triggering the cancer, but some of them – the "drivers" – clearly were. Scientists believe it will be possible eventually to identify these driver mutations and find the genetic faults that led to the changes in a healthy human cell that caused it to divide uncontrollably to form a cancerous tumour.

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Scientists Decode Entire Genetic Code Of Cancer

Cracking the Cancer Code A cluster of breast cancer cells, with blue ones marking actively growing cells and yellow marking dying cells. Could scientists crack their code next? Wellcome Trust

From Popular Science:

And cigarette smokers get a free mutation in every pack.

In a major step toward understanding cancer, one of the biggest problems bedeviling modern medicine, scientists have now cracked the genetic code for two of the most common cancers. This marks just the beginning of an international effort to catalog all the genes that go wrong among the many types of human cancer, the BBC reports.

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Scientists Crack 'Entire Genetic Code' Of Cancer

From BBC:

Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.

Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer.

The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth.

China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas.

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Why Cancer Cells Just Won't Die: Researcher Identifies Protein Which Regulates Cell Suicide

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 10, 2009) — When cells experience DNA damage, they'll try to repair it. But if that fails, the damaged cells are supposed to self-destruct, a process called apoptosis. A cancer researcher at Robarts Research Institute at The University of Western Ontario has identified a protein that regulates apoptosis, a new discovery which has implications for both the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

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Four-Country Study Finds No Cancer Link To Cellphone Usage

From USA Today:

A large new study is the latest to find no link between rising cellphone use and rates of brain cancer.

Researchers in four Scandinavian countries found no increase in brain tumor diagnoses from 1998 to 2003, when cellphone use in those countries grew sharply, according to a study published online Thursday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

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Tiny Magnetic Discs Could Kill Cancer Cells

Tiny discs attach to the membranes of cancer cells and are then spun with an alternating magnetic field to disrupt the membrane. Credit: Nature

From Cosmos/AFP:

PARIS: Tiny magnetic discs just a millionth of a metre in diameter could be used to used to kill cancer cells, according to a study published on Sunday.

The method uses a magnetic field a tenth as strong as used in previous efforts, and should have few side effects, the authors said.

Laboratory tests found the so-called ‘nanodiscs’, around 60 billionths of a metre thick, could be used to disrupt the membranes of cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct.

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Key Cancer Spread Gene Found

From The BBC:

Scientists have pinpointed a gene linked to more than half of all breast cancers.

The gene, NRG1 (neuregulin-1), is also thought to play a role in many bowel, prostate, ovarian and bladder tumours.

The University of Cambridge team said the breakthrough should provide "vital information" about how cancer spreads.

Experts agreed the finding, published in the journal Oncogene, could represent a very significant advance in the fight against cancer.

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Naked Mole Rats May Help Cure Cancer

Cancer-free mole rats could help humans in the fight against cancer
(Image: Neil Bromhall/Naturepl)

From New Scientist:

THEY might be bald and ugly, but naked mole rats never get cancer. If their trick can be copied it could help humans resist cancer too.

It's almost impossible to culture naked mole rat cells in the lab, which made Andrei Seluanov and Vera Gorbunova from Rochester University, New York, wonder if this might be linked to their ability to resist cancer.

They found that a dilute solution of naked mole rat skin cells did start to proliferate, but stopped once the cells reached a certain, relatively low density. Such "contact inhibition" is also used by human cells to inhibit growth, but cancer bypasses this mechanism so cells keep growing.

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Exposure To Sun 'May Help People With Cancer Survive'

Experts say protection from the sun is vital but that some
exposure is necessary for good health. Reuters

From the Independent:

Sunbathing warnings may have been too simplistic, say scientists.

Sunbathing is known to cause skin cancer – but it may also help people survive when they get it, scientists are reporting.

Two studies published yesterday showed that vitamin D produced by the action of the sun on the skin may help improve survival for patients with skin and bowel cancer.

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UCSB Scientists Create Cancer-Stopping Nanoparticle-and-Laser Treatment

This Laser Cures Cancer, Brah: Gary Braun stands by the drug-activating laser courtesy of University of California, Santa Barbara

From Popular Science:

Nanotechnology, lasers, genetics, and cancer? If there was also something about space, this story might have been a PopSci full house. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), have figured out a way to deliver cancer-stopping RNA directly into the nucleus of a diseased cell. To get into the nucleus, the RNA is wrapped in special gold nanoshells which are then selectively opened by a laser.

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Virus Linked To Prostate Tumours

From The BBC:

Scientists have produced compelling evidence that a virus known to cause cancer in animals is linked to prostate cancer in humans.

The researchers from the University of Utah and Columbia University medical schools found the virus in 27% of the 200 cancerous prostates they looked at.

They say it was associated with more aggressive tumours and found in only 6% of non-cancerous prostates.

The finding raises the prospect of one day producing a vaccine.

Previous research has linked XMRV (Xenotropic murine leukaemia virus) to prostate cancer but not in such an aggressive way.

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