Cancer News and Discussions

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Study points toward new ways to prevent liver cancer
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10- ... ancer.html
by Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Almost all liver cancers develop after decades of chronic liver disease, but a new discovery by Columbia researchers may lead to treatments that could break the link.

The new research shows that during chronic liver disease a shift in the balance of quiescent and activated stellate liver cells not only promotes fibrosis but also sets the stage for the most common type of primary liver cancer, called hepatocellular carcinoma.

The findings, published online in Nature, suggest that it may be possible to prevent the development of liver cancer—the fourth-leading cause of cancer death worldwide—by interfering with stellate cell activation.

Hepatocellular carcinoma develops almost exclusively in patients with a chronic liver disease, including cirrhosis, hepatitis, or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. These diseases often cause extensive and progressive scar tissue (aka fibrosis) in the liver.
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Cervical cancer discovery offers major new clue to better understand the disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10- ... -clue.html
by University College London
Scientists have discovered that cervical cancer can be divided into two distinct molecular subgroups—one far more aggressive than the other—as part of the largest "omics" study of its kind, led by researchers at UCL and the University of Southampton.

Published in Nature Communications, researchers say the breakthrough findings are a "major step forward" in understanding disease and provide a tantalizing new clue in determining the best treatments for individual patients.

Cervical cancer is a major cause of cancer-related deaths in women and accounts for 528,000 new cases and 266,000 deaths worldwide each year. It is almost always caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common virus that can be passed from one person to another during sex.

Even in the U.K., where NHS cervical screening has dramatically reduced cancer incidence and with the national HPV vaccination program aiming to cut rates even further, around 850 women die every year from the disease.

For the study, researchers started by applying a multi-omics approach, analyzing and comparing a combination of different markers, including DNA, RNA, proteins, and metabolites, in 236 cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) cases, the most common form of cervical cancer, available in a publicly available U.S. database.

A multi-omics analysis aims to identify molecular markers and characteristics associated with biological processes (in this case cervical cancer cells) by analyzing DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolites, etc. Omics is a branch of science incorporating multiple disciplines such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics.
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Researchers develop an algorithm to improve cancer treatment
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10- ... tment.html
by Josh Barney, University of Virginia
UVA Health Cancer Center researchers have developed an algorithm that will improve cancer care by quickly and easily identifying patients who will benefit from powerful cancer drugs called kinase inhibitors. The algorithm may have other diagnostic benefits for patients as well.

Kinase inhibitors are the most common cancer drugs approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. They can be hugely effective for the right patients, but they don't work for everyone. UVA's algorithm offers a new and better way to pinpoint patients who will benefit—an important step forward in precision medicine tailored to the individual.

"We are really excited about this algorithm, which performs better than existing approaches with fewer requirements and assumptions—making it more applicable to understanding a cancer state from a single snapshot of the tumor," said researcher Kristen M. Naegle of UVA's Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint program of UVA's schools of Medicine and Engineering. "Combining this approach with existing biomarkers for cancer diagnosis may help us to better tailor therapies, design new combination therapies, anticipate response to treatment and design better clinical trials."

KSTAR for better cancer care

Naegle and colleagues set out to overcome the limitations of existing methods to identify patients who may benefit from kinase inhibitors. Most of these methods require difficult-to-obtain and sometimes unreliable information quantifying "phosphorylation sites" within cells. UVA's new approach, however, does not need all this complex measurement. Instead, it can predict key information based upon other available data.
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Researchers identify a regulator of breast cancer development
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... ancer.html
by UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern researchers have identified a causative signaling pathway in breast cancer, providing potential new targets for treatment of the most common type of cancer in women. The findings, published in Science Advances, build on previous work in which the group identified a gene called ZMYND8 as a regulator of breast tumor growth.In the new study, the researchers further characterize a critical role for ZMYND8 and levels of 27-hydroxycholesterol in the development of breast cancer.

"This study identifies a cause of breast cancer," said lead author Weibo Luo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pathology and member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Breast cancer is a leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. The new discovery may represent a step toward developing effective therapies and identifying breast cancer risk in patients early.

The development of breast cancer begins with a population of cells called breast cancer stem cells that have the remarkable ability to self-replicate. These "bad seeds" drive tumor growth, but how this occurs is not well understood.

Following the identification of ZMYND8 as a regulator of breast cancer growth, Dr. Luo and his colleagues wondered if the gene also played a role in the development of tumors.

Using a mouse model in which the researchers had knocked out the ZMYND8 gene and complementary cell culture experiments, the researchers found that ZMYND8 promotes breast cancer stem cell maintenance and self-renewal, and stimulates the transformation of these cells into tumor cells, leading to breast tumor initiation.
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This Single Blood Test Can Detect Multiple Kinds of Cancer Early
by Colin Pritchard
November 2, 2022

Introduction:
(Science Alert) Detecting cancer early before it spreads throughout the body can be lifesaving. This is why doctors recommend regular screening for several common cancer types, using a variety of methods.

Colonoscopies, for example, screen for colon cancer, while mammograms screen for breast cancer.

While important, getting all these tests done can be logistically challenging, expensive, and sometimes uncomfortable for patients. But what if a single blood test could screen for most common cancer types all at once?

This is the promise of multicancer early detection tests, or MCEDs. This year, President Joe Biden identified developing MCED tests as a priority for the Cancer Moonshot, a US$1.8 billion federal effort to reduce the cancer death rate and improve the quality of life of cancer survivors and those living with cancer.

As a laboratory medicine physician and researcher who develops molecular tests for cancer, I believe MCED tests are likely to transform cancer screening in the near future, particularly if they receive strong federal support to enable rapid innovation.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-sing ... cer-early
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weatheriscool
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Preventing resistance in cancer therapy
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-resistanc ... erapy.html
by Austrian Academy of Sciences

The latest developmental drugs, particularly for use in oncology, rely on the targeted degradation of harmful pathogenic proteins. In a recent study published in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers at CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Dundee (U.K.) identify potential resistance mechanisms and provide insights on how to overcome them.

Traditional targeted cancer therapies mainly rely on drugs that bind pathogenic proteins and inhibit their function. Newer drugs have advanced chemical molecules known as degraders, which force the targeted degradation of disease-relevant proteins. This method of targeted protein degradation is not only more efficient, but also better at overcoming potential drug resistance.

For many years, CeMM Principal Investigator Georg Winter and his research group have been working on further developing this paradigm. Small-molecule degraders work like a glue by recruiting the defective, disease-causing protein to effectors of the cellular waste disposal systems, which are known as E3 ubiquitin ligases. This binding in turn kick-starts the degradation process of the defective protein.

Alexander Hanzl, first author and Ph.D. student in the Winter Lab at CeMM, conducted a study to investigate which resistances can arise during the degradation process. He explains, "One challenge with degraders is that they have to bind two sites at once—both the defective protein and a protein of our cell's own degradation system, the E3 ligase. It is therefore all the more important to understand the process of binding and ubiquitination in functional detail. Only then can future degraders be modeled in the best possible way."
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Shorter course of radiation therapy yields comparable results for patients with non-metastatic soft tissue sarcoma
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... ients.html
by University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center

Patients with non-metastatic soft tissue sarcoma (STS) who need pre-operative radiation therapy can safely receive hypofractionated treatment over three weeks instead of five, with comparable tumor control and no increased risk of major complications in wound healing, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Results from the study, led by Ashleigh Guadagnolo, M.D., professor of Radiation Oncology, were published today in The Lancet Oncology. Guadagnolo also presented results at the 2022 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting.

On the single-arm, non-randomized trial, patients received hypofractionated radiation therapy, consisting of higher daily radiation therapy doses per treatment over fewer days relative to conventional therapy. Thirty-one percent of patients developed major wound complications within 120 days of surgery, while local tumor control was 93% at two-year follow-up—both comparable to historically reported rates with the longer treatment course.

"Our data indicate the three-week regimen offers patients a likely safe and effective alternative to the current standard of care with comparable outcomes in disease control and no increased risks of major wound complications," Guadagnolo said. "We are excited by the current results of this study, which demonstrate the value of a hypofractionated approach to radiation therapy, which is more convenient for patients."
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Research identifies new way to halt pancreatic cancer invasion by targeting healthy cells
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... althy.html
by Queen Mary, University of London
Researchers from Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London have identified a new channel of communication through which non-cancerous cells drive the invasion of cancer cells in pancreatic cancer.

By blocking a particular signaling molecule within this pathway, called Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 1 (FGFR1), the team was able to reduce invasion of pancreatic cancer cells in the laboratory.

The findings, published today in Oncogene, may pave the way for the development of new treatment approaches for pancreatic cancer that target the cross-talk between cancer cells and their environment.
Silencing the communication between cancer cells and healthy cells
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New study illuminates why cancers caused by BRCA mutations recur
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... recur.html
by Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Basser Center for BRCA at the Abramson Cancer Center have discovered factors that may make breast and ovarian cancers associated with BRCA1/2 gene mutations more likely to recur.

These mutations strongly predispose women to breast and ovarian cancers, and these cancers have a high risk of recurrence after initial treatment. In the new study, published this week in Nature Communications, the researchers compared a large set of tumors from patients with primary and recurrent BRCA1/2 mutation-associated breast and ovarian cancers, and found multiple features associated with recurrence, including features that would be expected to improve tumors' ability to repair treatment-caused DNA damage.

"These results suggest key biological features of therapy-resistant recurrences, which point to new possibilities for treating BRCA1/2-mutation cancers," said the study's senior author Katharine Nathanson, MD, the Pearl Basser Professor for BRCA-Related Research in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, Deputy Director of the Abramson Cancer Center, and Director of Genetics at the Basser Center for BRCA.
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National quality improvement initiative successfully helps address pandemic-related cancer screening deficits
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... ancer.html
by American College of Surgeons
A national Return-to-Screening effort initiated and led by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) helped restore cancer screenings to pre-pandemic levels and contributed to a significant number of additional screening tests, according to new research published in JAMA Network Open.

In response to growing concerns about missed cancer screenings related to COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, the ACS Cancer Programs, together with the American Cancer Society, launched a Return-to-Screening national Quality Improvement (QI) Project in early 2021 to help accredited programs estimate and reduce local cancer screening deficits.

The article in JAMA Network Open reveals, for the first time, final data from the QI project, which included 786 Commission on Cancer (CoC) and National Accreditation Program of Breast Centers (NAPBC) accredited programs. These programs include hospitals, treatment centers, and other cancer facilities. It is estimated that the CoC programs treat nearly 70 percent of recently diagnosed cancer patients in the U.S. annually.
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