Research at Lund University in Sweden gives hope that one of the most serious types of brain tumour, glioblastoma multiforme, could be fought by the patients' own immune system. The tumours are difficult to remove with surgery because the tumour cells grow into the surrounding healthy brain tissue. A patient with the disease therefore does not usually survive much longer than a year after the discovery of the tumour. The team has tested different ways of stimulating the immune system, suppressed by the tumour, with a 'vaccine'.

Tamoxifen is a time-honored breast cancer drug used to treat millions of women with early-stage and less-aggressive disease, and now a University of Rochester Medical Center team has shown how to exploit tamoxifen’s secondary activities so that it

Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine have demonstrated that vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is highly competent at finding, infecting, and killing human melanoma cells, both in vitro and in animal models, while having little propensity to infect non-cancerous cells.



"If it works as well in humans, this could confer a substantial benefit on patients afflicted with this deadly disease," says Anthony van den Pol, a researcher on the study. The research was published online ahead of print in the Journal of Virology.

Screening breast ultrasound performed after mammography on women with greater than 50% breast density detects an additional 3.4 cancers or high risk lesions per one thousand woman screened, a detection rate just under that of screening mammography alone for women with less dense breasts, a new study shows. Screening mammography detects 4-5 cancers per thousand women screened.

Combining CT imaging findings with baseline serum lactate dehydrogenase levels is showing promise as a way to predict survival in patients with metastaticterm melanoma being treated with anti-angiogenic therapy.

The Myc oncogene can disrupt the 24-hour internal rhythm in cancer cells. Postdoctoral fellow Brian Altman, PhD, and graduate student Annie Hsieh, MD, both from the in the lab of Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD, director of the Abramson Cancer Center, Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, present their data in the "Metabolic Pathway Regulation in Cancer" session at the 2013 American Association for Cancer Research meeting, Washington, D.C., April 9, 2013.

Cancer patients around the world could have their lives extended thanks to a discovery made by Sussex scientists.

Researchers at the University of Sussex, who have been working with the Institute of Cancer Research, have found that a cutting-edge cancer drug may be able to keep patients alive for longer than they live now.

The discovery by the researchers, who looked at exactly how the drugs attack tumours, has been hailed as “unexpected and exciting”.

The drugs, known as kinase inhibitors, are a new type of treatment, with 25 currently in use on a variety of cancers.

New research appearing online today in Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC, shows that decreased levels of vitamin D may predispose smokers to developing tobacco-related cancer. This study illustrates that simple vitamin D blood tests and supplements have the potential to improve smokers' health.  In the U.S. alone, cigarette smoking accounts for more deaths annually than HIV, illegal drugs, alcohol, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.

Currently, doctors have no way to accurately measure damage to the body soon after a person is exposed to ionizing radiation.
It is therefore difficult to know whether a person is likely to suffer serious effects after an occupational or accidental exposure.
This animal study shows that radiation exposure alters the levels of certain small molecules in the blood, perhaps offering a reliable measure of damage to the body.

PHILADELPHIA – A recently described master regulator protein may explain the development of aberrant cell growth in the pancreas spurred by inflammation

A team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania profiled gene expression of mouse pancreatic ductal and duct-like cells from different states - embryonic development, acute pancreatitis and K-ras mutation-driven carcinogenesis - to find the molecular regulation of these processes.

Cancer drugs should kill tumors, not encourage their spread. But new evidence suggests that an otherwise promising class of drugs may actually increase the risk of tumors spreading to bone, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The drugs, IAP antagonists, block survival signals that many cancer cells rely on to stay alive. Working in mice, the investigators found that targeting the same protein that makes tumors vulnerable to death also overactivates cells called osteoclasts, which are responsible for tearing down bone.

The American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO) says oncologists should make chemotherapy treatment recommendations on the basis of published reports of clinical trials and a patient’s health status and treatment preferences.

How about published reports of clinical trials?

More chemotherapy is given for breast cancer than for any other form of cancer and there have been more published reports of clinical trials for breast cancer than for any other form of cancer.