Liver Cancer News and Research

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Liver cancer is more common in older people. Over half of people newly diagnosed with liver cancer are age 65 and over. Liver cancer is more common in men than in women. Liver cancer rates are highest among Asians and Pacific Islanders, most likely because of higher prevalence of viral Hepatitis infection. Liver cancer rates are lower among whites than Blacks or Asians and Pacific Islanders. At this time, we do not know exactly what causes cancer of the liver. There are several different types of liver cancer. The most common type is associated with long-term excessive alcoholic beverage use, scarring of the liver (cirrhosis), and Hepatitis B virus or Hepatitis C virus infection. Long-term use of anabolic steroids can also increase the risk of getting liver cancer. Smoking is also believed to increase the risk of getting liver cancer.

Nearly 50% of Medicaid patients infected with hepatitis C denied coverage for life-saving antiviral drugs

Nearly 50 percent of Medicaid patients infected with chronic hepatitis C whose doctors had prescribed newer, life-saving antiviral drugs were denied coverage to the therapies because they weren't considered "a medical necessity" or because the patients tested positive for alcohol/drugs, among other reasons, according to new Penn Medicine research.

17 Nov 2015

UC Irvine Health researchers develop one-step test to detect HCV infections

UC Irvine Health researchers have developed a cost-effective one-step test that screens, detects and confirms hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections. Dr. Ke-Qin Hu, director of hepatology services, will present findings at the Annual Meeting of American Association for the Study of Liver Disease in San Francisco, Nov. 14-16. Current blood-based HCV testing requires two steps and can be expensive, inconvenient and is not widely available or affordable globally.

15 Nov 2015

FixHepC Buyers Club exposes weakness in Australian healthcare, assists patients to import life saving medication

In one of the greatest advances in medicine in decades, Hepatitis C is now largely curable. Over 200,000 Australians suffer from Hepatitis C. However the US manufacturer, Gilead Sciences Inc is attempting to charge the PBS $84,000 for a 12 week course of medication that costs under $200 dollars to manufacture.

13 Nov 2015

Boston Scientific signs definitive agreement to acquire CeloNova's interventional radiology business

Boston Scientific has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the interventional radiology portfolio of CeloNova Biosciences, a San Antonio-based developer of endovascular and interventional cardiology technologies.

10 Nov 2015

UT Southwestern's Helen H. Hobbs named recipient of Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

UT Southwestern Medical Center geneticist Dr. Helen H. Hobbs is the 2016 recipient of the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

10 Nov 2015

New funding for Centenary's life saving research

The Centenary Institute has welcomed the Federal Government’s announcement of funding for 9 new and innovative medical research projects via the latest round of NHMRC grant rounds funding, officially confirmed today.

9 Nov 2015

Loyola presents Scientist of the Year awards

Susan Baker, PhD, a leading researcher of a class of viruses that includes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), has been named Senior Scientist of the Year at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Wei Qiu, PhD, who is researching the molecular mechanisms of liver cancer, has been named Junior Scientist of the Year.

6 Nov 2015

Cancer DNA in patient's bloodstream could help deliver personalized treatment for liver cancer

Fragments of cancer DNA circulating in a patient's bloodstream could help doctors deliver more personalized treatment for liver cancer, Japanese researchers report.

2 Nov 2015

Certain drugs could be used to treat gastric cancers with particular pattern of mutations

Gastric cancer, otherwise known as stomach cancer, does not respond well to existing treatments and it is currently the third leading cause of cancer death in the world (after lung and liver cancer). Researchers have discovered that certain drugs, currently used to treat breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancers, could also be used to treat certain gastric cancers with a particular pattern of mutations (genomic molecular fingerprint).

29 Oct 2015

Cancer diagnosis improvements in England: an interview with Lucy Elliss-Brookes

The ‘two week wait’ referral was brought into England in 2000. If a patient goes to see their GP and they meet specific criteria that cause the GP to think they might have cancer, then they should be referred to see a specialist within two weeks.

28 Oct 2015

Researchers uncover genes that can suppress HCV infection within the liver

University of Adelaide researchers have uncovered the role played by a family of genes, which can suppress hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection within the liver.

28 Oct 2015

Researchers develop multiplexed screening approach to study cancer development in mice

In a novel use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, which can be deployed to switch genes off, researchers from Germany, the UK and Spain have developed a multiplexed screening approach to study and model cancer development in mice. The scientists mutated genes in the adult mouse liver uncovering their cancer-causing roles and determining which combinations of genes cooperate to cause liver cancer.

27 Oct 2015

Cancer-causing parasitic worm may help patients recover from wounds, say JCU scientists

It's short, ugly and deadly. But James Cook University scientists have found a cancer-causing, parasitic worm could help patients recover from their wounds.

22 Oct 2015

Can-Fite's CF102 granted Orphan Drug Designation by EMA for treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Can-Fite BioPharma Ltd., a biotechnology company with a pipeline of proprietary small molecule drugs that address inflammatory and cancer diseases, today announced the Company's oncology drug candidate, CF102, has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the indication of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer.

12 Oct 2015

Cattle virus found in human cancer cells

Evidence of exposure to bovine leukaemia virus (BLV) has been found in human breast cancer samples. This is the first suggestion of a possible link between infection with a leukaemia virus prevalent in cows and breast cancer in humans.

18 Sep 2015

Researchers establish link between bovine leukemia virus and human breast cancer

A new study by University of California, Berkeley, researchers establishes for the first time a link between infection with the bovine leukemia virus and human breast cancer.

16 Sep 2015

Inhibition of FGFR3 receptor could be a new way of treating patients with liver cell cancer

In a recent study, scientists from the Institute for Cancer Research at MedUni Vienna have shown that the growth factor receptor FGFR3 increases the rate of growth and aggressiveness of hepatocellular carcinomas (liver cell cancer). Inhibition of this receptor could be a new and effective way of treating patients.

15 Sep 2015

New DNA analysis may guide personalized management of hepatocellular carcinoma

Detection of small fragments of tumor DNA, known as circulating tumor DNA, in a patient's pre-surgery serum samples predicts early recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma and may guide treatment, according to a study published in Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the basic and translational science journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.

10 Sep 2015

ICU-related mortality may explain variations in cancer outcomes

A Scottish population-based study has characterised the incidence of critical illness resulting in admission to an intensive care unit during the first 2 years after a cancer diagnosis.

9 Sep 2015

Inhalation exposure to PM2.5 pollution triggers liver fibrosis

A research team led by Kezhong Zhang, Ph.D., at the Wayne State University School of Medicine's Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, has discovered that exposure to air pollution has a direct adverse health effect on the liver and causes liver fibrosis, an illness associated with metabolic disease and liver cancer.

3 Sep 2015