A team from Children's Medical Research Institute has discovered a new way to impair cancer cell growth, which could lead to the development of a new class of cancer therapeutics with minimal side-effects on normal cells.
Professor Hilda Pickett, who leads CMRI's Telomere Length Regulation Unit, said this was an exciting development for their team.
"This project builds on over a decade of work by my team and our collaborators to develop antiproliferative agents that target telomeres. The results are promising and have future potential to improve long term health outcomes for all types of cancer," says Pickett.
Lymphatic fluid from surgical drains, which is usually tossed in the trash, is a treasure in the hands of University of Pittsburgh and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis researchers who found that this liquid could inform more precise treatments for patients with head and neck cancer caused by human papillomavirus (HPV).
The new study, published in Clinical Cancer Research, shows for the first time that HPV DNA in lymphatic fluid collected after surgery is a powerful biomarker that could predict risk of cancer recurrence and help clinicians decide whether to ramp up adjuvant therapies or safely de-escalate treatment for patients with HPV-positive head and neck cancer.
"Over the last decade, there has been emerging interest in liquid biopsy to pick up cancer recurrences after treatment," said senior author José P. Zevallos, M.D., M.P.H., professor and Eugene N. Myers, chair of the Department of Otolaryngology at the Pitt School of Medicine and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. "Our goal was to bring liquid biopsy into the curative pathway for head and neck cancer so that we can use it not just to find recurrences but also to help make treatment decisions."
Head and neck cancer once almost exclusively affected heavy drinkers and smokers, but the landscape of this disease has changed dramatically because of HPV, according to Zevallos. HPV-positive oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) has now surpassed cervical cancer as the most common HPV-related malignancy, and incidences are rising rapidly worldwide.
Monitoring cancer cells effectively can help physicians with treatment and management, thus reducing cancer-related mortality. Can non-invasive technologies pave the way for improved monitoring to reduce cancer mortality rates? Diagnostic platforms that non-invasively measure the electrical properties of cancer cells offer promise in the early detection of cancer drug resistance and metastasis.
Research has shown that it is possible to understand a cancer type and its drug resistance status from cellular permittivity and conductivity data. In fact, there is an increasing demand for analytical methods that can rapidly measure a cell's electrical properties.
Hodgkin lymphoma prognosis, biology tracked with circulating tumor DNA
by Stanford University Medical Center
A Stanford Medicine-led, international study of hundreds of samples from patients with Hodgkin lymphoma has shown that levels of tumor DNA circulating in their blood can identify who is responding well to treatment and others who are likely to experience a disease recurrence—potentially letting some patients who are predicted to have favorable outcomes forgo lengthy treatment.
Surprisingly, the study also revealed that Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes, can be divided into two groups, each with distinct genetic changes and slightly different prognoses. These changes hint at weaknesses in the cancer's growth mechanisms that could be targeted by new, less toxic therapies.
Monitoring cancer cells effectively can help physicians with treatment and management, thus reducing cancer-related mortality. Can non-invasive technologies pave the way for improved monitoring to reduce cancer mortality rates? Diagnostic platforms that non-invasively measure the electrical properties of cancer cells offer promise in the early detection of cancer drug resistance and metastasis.
Research has shown that it is possible to understand a cancer type and its drug resistance status from cellular permittivity and conductivity data. In fact, there is an increasing demand for analytical methods that can rapidly measure a cell's electrical properties.
Hodgkin lymphoma prognosis, biology tracked with circulating tumor DNA
by Stanford University Medical Center
A Stanford Medicine-led, international study of hundreds of samples from patients with Hodgkin lymphoma has shown that levels of tumor DNA circulating in their blood can identify who is responding well to treatment and others who are likely to experience a disease recurrence—potentially letting some patients who are predicted to have favorable outcomes forgo lengthy treatment.
Surprisingly, the study also revealed that Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes, can be divided into two groups, each with distinct genetic changes and slightly different prognoses. These changes hint at weaknesses in the cancer's growth mechanisms that could be targeted by new, less toxic therapies.
I am still a great believer in the GIGO principle. GIGO as in Garbage In, Garbage Out. I think that this still holds true for AI. It still does not seem capable of understanding mistakes made in its programming and in data submitted to it. More precise measuring devices generating relatively reliable data sets can thus make for a very powerful basis for further advancement in most any field, including cancer research and diagnosis.
Boosting Immunotherapy in Non-responsive Cancer Cells December 11, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Cancer immunotherapy primes a patient's immune system to better find and destroy cancer cells, improving upon the body's natural ability to fight tumours. Contemporary immunotherapy approaches aim to stimulate immune cells called T cells to target tumours. In this process, the production and functioning of a cytokine (a small signalling protein) known as Interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) are essential for the immune system to eliminate tumours effectively. These approaches affect fewer normal cells when compared to chemotherapy or radiation. However, they are either very expensive or less efficient.
In a new study, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) tried to understand how different types of cancer cells respond to IFN-γ activation. They found that only some types of cancer cells respond well to IFN-γ activation, while others don't. They also suggest some approaches that can be used to make these non-responsive cancer cells better respond to immunotherapy. The study was published in Frontiers in Immunology.
"IFN-γ is produced by immune cells such as T cells or natural killer cells. It binds to tumours, and induces apoptosis [cell death]," explains Avik Chattopadhyay, first author and PhD student at the Department of Biochemistry, IISc. "Reports in the literature have shown earlier that if there are lower amounts of IFN-γ or defects in its signalling, then the tumours don't respond well to the immunotherapy processes."
In the current study, when the team first treated cancer cells in the lab with IFN-γ, they found that the colour of the cell growth medium changed to yellow, indicating that the cells were releasing acidic byproducts such as lactic acid. This led the team to dig deeper into the role of these byproducts. They found that the higher amounts of lactic acid produced in the cell culture medium was due to increased glycolysis, a series of chemical reactions that extracts energy from glucose.
The team found that cancer cell lines derived from the liver and the kidney showed increased production of nitric oxide (NO) and lactic acid upon IFN-γ activation. This, in turn, increased the production of toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) leading to oxidative damage, which eventually kills the cancer cells.
Researchers Discover Key to Epithelial Cell Growth December 21, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Australian researchers have discovered a new way that epithelial cells, which form layers in organs like the skin and stomach, attach to one another, and how they perceive growth signals at these attachments, helping them form tissues of the right size and shape.
Epithelial cells cover the surfaces of most organs in the body and must adhere to each other to form both a protective and permeable barrier. They are exquisitely designed to both be tightly sealed against pathogens like bacteria, and to also allow the transport of salts, fluids, and nutrients.
Researchers, led by Professor Kieran Harvey and Dr Benjamin Kroeger, at the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne have discovered a new way by which epithelial cells adhere to each other in the vinegar fly, Drosophila. The study is published today in the journal, Developmental Cell.
Previous work from Professor Harvey and others led to the discovery of an important organ growth control pathway, called Hippo. First discovered in Drosophila, the Hippo pathway does effectively the same job in mammals and controls the size of different organs such as the liver and heart. The Hippo pathway is also important for human diseases as it is mutated in multiple epithelial cancers. The new study provides further insights into how Hippo signalling is coordinated in growing tissues.
In the present study, the researchers made the important discovery of a new subcellular adhesion site that helps epithelial cells adhere to one another – termed by the researchers as “basal spot junctions”. They showed that basal spot junctions not only helped cells adhere to one another but were important for regulating Hippo signalling. “Our discovery of basal spot junctions in epithelial tissues has given us new insights into how epithelial cells adhere to each other and how epithelial tissues grow to the right size and shape,” Professor Harvey said.
A drug screening system that models cancers using lab-grown tissues called organoids has helped uncover a promising target for future pancreatic cancer treatments, according to a new study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.
In the study, published Dec. 26 in Cell Stem Cell, the scientists tested more than 6,000 compounds on their pancreatic tumor organoids, which contain a common pancreatic cancer-driving mutation. They identified one compound—an existing heart drug called perhexiline maleate—that powerfully suppresses the organoids' growth.
Researchers have found that inexperienced doctors performing AI-assisted colonoscopies significantly improved their detection of polyps. Using AI with this diagnostic tool could lower the chances of missing these potential precursors to colorectal cancer.
The addition of AI has led to the enhancement of several medical diagnostic tools, including mammography, ultrasound, and MRI. Now it’s colonoscopy’s turn to get a computer-aided upgrade.
Colonoscopy, the insertion of an endoscope into the colon to examine its interior walls, reduces the incidence of colorectal cancer-related death by detecting and removing premalignant polyps, otherwise known as adenomas. However, as a diagnostic tool, colonoscopy can be imperfect; up to 26% of adenomas and 9% of advanced adenomas can be missed, increasing the risk of adverse outcomes and mortality. Reasons adenomas are missed include flat morphology, poor bowel preparation, and insufficient endoscopist experience.
