Proliferation News and Research

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Balancing cellular aging and cancer risk through biotechnology

In a way, trying to repair age-related heart damage and trying to fight cancer are opposite problems. Your heart cells' ability to regenerate themselves and proliferate into new, young cells degrades as you get older.

30 Jul 2015

New tool combines drugs to target kinase dependency in cancer

Targeted therapies attack a cancer's genetic sensitivities. However, it can be difficult to discover the genetics driving a patient's cancer, and the effects of drugs designed to target a genetic abnormality often go beyond their intended target alone. The result is threefold: sometimes a drug is prescribed to treat a target that proves to be irrelevant to the disease, sometimes an existing drug could be used to treat a cancer for which there is no approved targeted therapy, and sometimes a combination of targeted treatments could be used to simultaneously silence more than one genetic cause of a patient's cancer.

29 Jul 2015

‘Digital Doctor’ study examines attitudes of primary care physicians to new healthcare technologies

Healthcare apps and wearable tech have a long future in the treatment of patients, according to a panel of Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) interviewed as part of a newly launched Ipsos Healthcare study.

29 Jul 2015

LMU researchers reveal role of mutations in development of Ewing's sarcoma

Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich have elucidated at the molecular level how an otherwise innocuous inherited mutation that is quite common in European populations interacts with a spontaneous somatic mutation to promote the development of Ewing's sarcoma.

28 Jul 2015

Protein imbalances within cells can cause ovarian cancer

Cancer can be caused solely by protein imbalances within cells, a study of ovarian cancer has found. The discovery is a major breakthrough because, until now, genetic aberrations have been seen as the main cause of almost all cancer.

28 Jul 2015

New study reveals protein's critical role in development and progression of AML

A new study by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reveals a protein's critical - and previously unknown -- role in the development and progression of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a fast-growing and extremely difficult-to-treat blood cancer.

24 Jul 2015

Study shows glitazone antidiabetic drug may reduce risk of Parkinson’s disease

A type of drug used to treat diabetes may reduce the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study published in PLOS Medicine.

22 Jul 2015

Patients' own genetically engineered immune cells show significant success against multiple myeloma

In recent years, immunotherapy has emerged as a promising treatment for certain cancers. Now this strategy, which uses patients' own immune cells, genetically engineered to target tumors, has shown significant success against multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells that is largely incurable.

21 Jul 2015

Research: 'Pill on a string' could help detect early signs of oesophageal cancer

A 'pill on a string' developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge could help doctors detect oesophageal cancer - cancer of the gullet - at an early stage, helping them overcome the problem of wide variation between biopsies, suggests research published today in the journal Nature Genetics.

21 Jul 2015

BUSM investigators receive MRA's Jackie King Young Investigator Awards

Boston University School of Medicine researchers Neil Joseph Ganem, PhD and Anurag Singh, PhD, each have received the Jackie King Young Investigator Awards from the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA), the largest private funder of melanoma research. Both serve as assistant professors of pharmacology & experimental therapeutics and medicine.

17 Jul 2015

Novel cancer drug candidate developed in Singapore advances into clinical trials

A made-in-Singapore cancer drug has advanced into clinical trials, charting a milestone in Singapore's biomedical sciences initiative that will go towards improving the lives of cancer patients in Singapore, and worldwide.

17 Jul 2015

Emory University immunologists identify long-lived antibody-producing cells in bone marrow

Immunologists from Emory University have identified a distinct set of long-lived antibody-producing cells in the human bone marrow that function as an immune archive.

16 Jul 2015

Study offers new way to suppress growth factors related to cancer cell proliferation

Cancer cells need life-essential molecules to proliferate. These so-called growth factors are activated by ectodomain shedding of precursor proteins on the outside of the plasma membrane, mainly carried out by three human cleavage enzymes. A pharmaceutical blocking of these enzymes could hinder cancer from growing but would also inhibit other life-essential processes.

13 Jul 2015

Decreased connectivity between network-specific brain regions linked to cognitive deficit in MS

An estimated 2.3 million individuals are living with multiple sclerosis (MS) worldwide. Approximately half of all individuals with MS experience changes in cognition such as impaired concentration, attention, memory, and judgment. The underlying brain basis for these deleterious effects has been largely elusive.

8 Jul 2015

Dental pulp stem cell transplants can contribute to peripheral nerve regeneration

Peripheral nerve injuries often are caused by trauma or surgical complications and can result in considerable disabilities. Regeneration of peripheral nerves can be accomplished effectively using autologous (self-donated) nerve grafts, but that procedure may sacrifice a functional nerve and cause loss of sensation in another part of the patient's body.

7 Jul 2015

Study could provide paradigm shift in treatment of age-related disease, cancer

Intermittent dosing with rapamycin selectively breaks the cascade of inflammatory events that follow cellular senescence, a phenomena in which cells cease to divide in response to DNA damaging agents, including many chemotherapies.

7 Jul 2015

Review article provides in depth survey of studies focusing on retinoblastoma protein's role in apoptosis

Retinoblastoma protein RB1, which is named after a form of pediatric tumor of the eye, is among the most common genetically regulated cellular proteins to malfunction in human cancer. RB1 was also the first tumor suppressor gene to be identified and its modes of inactivation in retinoblastoma tumors provided the basis for the ground-breaking two-hit hypothesis by the geneticist Alfred G. Knudson in the 70s, according to which cancer is due to the accumulation of multiple 'hits' or mutations in certain genes.

3 Jul 2015

Live imaging study reveals link between wound-associated inflammation and skin cancer risk

Researchers in the United Kingdom and Denmark have studied the "see-through" larvae of zebrafish to reveal how wound healing leads to skin cancer. Live imaging shows neutrophils, the protective inflammatory cells of the body's immune system, diverted from an induced wound to any nearby precancerous skin cells.

1 Jul 2015

New species of tRNA-derived small RNAs contribute to cell proliferation in cancer

Since their discovery in the 1950s, transfer RNAs (tRNAs) have been best known for their role in helping the cell make proteins from messenger RNA templates. However, recent studies have led to a previously-unsuspected concept that tRNAs are not always the end product; namely, they further serve as a source of small RNAs.

30 Jun 2015

Wistar Institute study shows that PI3K inhibitors may make a patient's cancer even worse

The enzyme phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) appears to be exploited in almost every type of human cancer, making it the focus of considerable interest as a therapeutic target, with many PI3K-inhibiting drugs currently in various stages of clinical development. However, PI3K inhibitors have only shown modest clinical activity with patients who receive these drugs experiencing very little improvement in survival.