Cancer News and Research

Latest Cancer News and Research

VisEn launches new imaging agent for monitoring key hypertension and renal disease biomarker

VisEn Medical Inc., a leader in fluorescence in vivo imaging from research through medicine, announced today the commercial launch of its new ReninSense680(TM) FAST imaging agent for measuring and monitoring a key hypertension and renal disease biomarker in vivo.

24 Sep 2009

Also in global health news: Malawi HIV/AIDS fight; cancer in developing world

Tim Gilbo, the World Bank's director in Malawi, announced on Tuesday that the organization will grant the country $30 million, which will be used to "increase access to prevention, treatment and mitigation services with a focus on behavioural change," SAPA/News24.com reports. Gilbo also said the country should "identify and promote those programmes that are working and drop or redesign those that are not bearing any fruits." UNAIDS Malawi coordinator Desmond Johns said HIV/AIDS is "arguably the single consistent threat in overall development" for Malawi (9/22).

24 Sep 2009

NIH grants $2.5M for the study of physical forces on cell function

The National Institutes of Health today announced an award of $2.5 million to a team led by Boston University biomedical engineer Bela Suki that will study the role of physical forces on cell function, with the goal of understanding the possible roles of these forces in diseases like atherosclerosis, neuro-degenerative diseases, metabolic disorders, aging and cancer.

24 Sep 2009

Marchers, celebrities sound off on health care reform

Across the country, protesters and celebrities are sounding off on health reform as legislation gets closer to becoming reality.

24 Sep 2009

Who are the uninsured and where do they live?

"The nation's uninsured — a growing class of people whose recession-fed ranks have swelled to 46.3 million — are central to the health care debate in Washington and the questions about how and whether to get them covered are as vexing and emotional as they come," USA Today reports. "While the nation waits for Congress and the White House to come up with answers, those who live without insurance say they are waiting scared."

24 Sep 2009

Genetic variation helps identify hepatitis C infected people, according to a study

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers are part of an international team that has discovered a genetic variation that could identify those people infected with hepatitis C who are most likely to benefit from current treatments.

24 Sep 2009

Hsp-27 protein helps identify aggressive prostate cancer

CANCER RESEARCH UK scientists have discovered a molecular 'flag' that predicts survival from prostate cancer at diagnosis, reveals a study published in the British Journal of Cancer.

24 Sep 2009

Advanced Biohealing announces growth strategy to expand its product line

Advanced BioHealing, Inc. (ABH), a leader in commercializing the promise of regenerative medicine, announced a strategic growth plan designed to continue the transformation of this former start-up into the leading international regenerative medicine company.

24 Sep 2009

Lab-on-a-chip performs 1,000 chemical reactions at once

Flasks, beakers, and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in medicinal chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a benchtop, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail.

From Siemens Healthineers 23 Sep 2009

Twinkling nanostars improve optical imaging of tumors

Researchers at Purdue University have created magnetically responsive gold nanostars that may offer a new approach to biomedical imaging. The nanostars gyrate when exposed to a rotating magnetic field and can scatter light to produce a pulsating or "twinkling" effect. This twinkling allows them to stand out more clearly from noisy backgrounds such as those found in biological tissue. Alexander Wei, Ph.D., and Kenneth Ritchie, Ph.D., M.Sc., led the team that created the new gyromagnetic imaging method. The work appears in a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

23 Sep 2009

Nanodiamonds advance anticancer gene therapy

Gene therapy holds promise in the treatment of cancer as well as a large number of other diseases. However, developing a scalable system for delivering genes to cells both efficiently and safely has been challenging. Now, two teams of researchers have developed versatile nanotechnology-enabled platforms that could get therapeutic genes safely and efficiently into cancer cells.

23 Sep 2009

Golden nanotubes detect tumor cells, map sentinel lymph nodes

Biomedical researchers at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock have developed a special contrast-imaging agent made of gold-coated carbon nanotubes that is capable of molecular mapping of lymphatic endothelial cells and detecting cancer metastasis in sentinel lymph nodes.

23 Sep 2009

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles catalyze brain tumor death

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago Medical Center's Brain Tumor Center have developed a way to target brain cancer cells using inorganic titanium dioxide nanoparticles bonded to antibodies.

23 Sep 2009

Magnetic nanoworms and nanocrystals deliver siRNA to tumors

Small pieces of nucleic acid known as short interfering RNAs, or siRNAs, can turn off the production of specific proteins, a property that makes them one of the more promising new classes of anticancer drugs in development. Indeed, at least two siRNA-based anticancer therapies, both delivered to tumors in nanoparticles, have begun human clinical trials.

23 Sep 2009

Morphotek receives NIAID grant to develop human mAb therapies against staphylococcal-derived pathogens

Morphotek(R), Inc., a subsidiary of Eisai Corporation of North America, announced today that it was awarded $843,289 in funding from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, to support the development of human monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies against staphylococcal-derived toxin(s).

23 Sep 2009

ImmunoCellular Therapeutics completes humanization of its ICT-37 and ICT-109 antibody candidates

ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Ltd. (OTCBB: IMUC), a clinical-stage biotechnology company that is developing immune based therapies for the treatment of brain and other cancers, announced today that it has completed humanization of ICT-37 and ICT-109.

23 Sep 2009

The ThermoDox and MR-HIFU program shows great promise for treating life-threatening cancers

Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG; AEX: PHI) and Celsion Corporation (NASDAQ: CLSN) today announced that their joint research program to evaluate ThermoDox® in combination with MR-HIFU (Magnetic Resonance guided High Intensity Focused Ultrasound) as a combination therapy to non-invasively treat difficult cancers has successfully completed the feasibility stage.

23 Sep 2009

New Fluorescence Molecular Tomography imaging systems from VisEn Medical

VisEn Medical Inc., a leader in fluorescence in vivo imaging from research through medicine, announced the launch and availability of a new Fluorescence Molecular Tomography (FMT) imaging system -- the FMT 1500, and an advanced version of its FMT 2500, the FMT 2500 LX.

23 Sep 2009

Results of Phase 3 CRYSTAL study of mCRC patients announced

The retrospective CRYSTAL analysis was conducted as a result of an effort to increase the tissue ascertainment rate to determine the K-ras status of patients’ tumors. The analysis included extended patient follow up of nearly 1.5 years and doubled the tissue ascertainment rate from 45% to 89%. These data are an update from the overall survival results from CRYSTAL that were published in the April 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

23 Sep 2009

Philips and Bruker sign MOU to develop new imaging technology

At the 2009 World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC) in Montreal, Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) and Bruker BioSpin, a division of Bruker Corporation, today announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the development of Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) scanners, a new imaging technology, for the preclinical market.

From Philips Healthcare 23 Sep 2009