Cancer News and Discussions

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raklian
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
weatheriscool
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New screening method targets hydrogen peroxide in the search for new cancer therapeutics
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11- ... ancer.html
by Leda Zimmerman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT chemical engineers have developed a way of swiftly screening compounds to determine their therapeutic potential for certain kinds of cancers. With a genetically engineered sensor and high-throughput technology, their method probes for changes in cellular concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), a specialized molecule known as an oxidant.

"The regulatory pathways of some tumors depend on elevated levels of H2O2," says Hadley Sikes, associate professor and Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. "But further increases in concentrations of this oxidant can lead to programmed cell death." In the researchers' screens of 600 small-molecule compounds, they were able to identify those that selectively boosted H2O2.

Other research efforts have used probes that respond indiscriminately to different kinds of oxidants, making it difficult to determine precisely which compounds make the greatest impact on these specialized molecules. The MIT screen is the first to zero in on a single oxidant. This enabled the team to characterize the cellular responses to potential drugs and to demonstrate that some of these compounds activated H2O2-mediated toxicity in susceptible cancer cell lines.

Their research appears in Cell Chemical Biology. Yining Hao and Troy F. Langford are first co-authors. The other contributors are Sun Jin Moon, a graduate student in chemical engineering, Kristen A. Eller, who worked on the project while an undergraduate, and Sikes.
weatheriscool
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New findings advance RAS inhibitors for use in fighting more cancers
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11- ... ncers.html
by UT Southwestern Medical Center
New findings by UT Southwestern researchers promote understanding of how one of the most commonly mutated genetic drivers of cancer passes signals that cause the disease.

The study, published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, focuses on a family of proteins called RAS, which is mutated in 20 to 25% of all cancers, especially in lethal cancers such as pancreatic, colorectal and lung cancers.

"A framework to develop RAS inhibitor strategies is badly needed because recently approved RAS inhibitors such as sotorasib only work against one specific mutation, and many other RAS mutations also cause cancer," said Kenneth Westover, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology and Biochemistry, member of the Chemistry and Cancer Research Program in the UT Southwestern Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, and an author of the study. "This work sets the stage for development of new targeted RAS inhibitors to address major drivers of lethal cancers, such as pancreatic and colon cancer."

Starting in 2012, Dr. Westover's lab worked with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to develop drugs that bind to a specific RAS mutant where a glycine amino acid at position 12 in the RAS protein is changed to a cysteine, the so-called KRAS G12C.

"Cysteine is a distinctive amino acid that allows us to irreversibly attach drugs using special chemistries. Other major cancer-associated RAS mutations do not give us the same foothold," Dr. Westover said.
weatheriscool
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Targeting MAPK6 offers potential therapeutic strategy for cancer
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11- ... ancer.html
by Baylor College of Medicine

A team led by scientists at Baylor College of Medicine uncovered new evidence supporting a cancer-promoting role for enzyme MAPK6. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that MAPK6 furthers cancer growth by activating the AKT pathway, a known cancer-promoting cellular mechanism. The findings suggest that therapies directed at interfering with MAPK6 activity in cancer may offer an effective treatment approach for this condition.

"Studies on the role of MAPK6 in human cancer have produced inconclusive results," said corresponding author Dr. Feng Yang, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor. "Some studies concluded that MAPK6 promoted cancer growth while others indicated the opposite effect. In the current study, we investigated the role of MAPK6 in several cancer cell lines and animal models of the condition and also studied the mechanism mediating MAPK6 effects."

Yang and his colleagues began by investigating the effect of overexpressing the MAPK6 gene in normal human prostate or breast epithelial cells grown in the lab.
weatheriscool
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New approach to improve ovarian cancer treatment

by University of Pittsburgh
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11- ... tment.html
Immune checkpoint inhibitors are a type of cancer treatment that help the immune system's T cells recognize and attack tumors. But these immunotherapy drugs aren't effective against all cancers. In a study published today in Science Advances, University of Pittsburgh and UPMC researchers reveal how certain cells drive immunotherapy resistance in a mouse model of ovarian cancer and show that targeting a signaling pathway in these cells improved tumor responses to immunotherapy.

Senior author Ronald Buckanovich, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at Pitt and co-director of the Women's Cancer Research Center—a collaboration between UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and Magee-Womens Research Institute—discusses the significance of these findings and outlines how this research is informing a clinical trial for patients with ovarian cancer.

What is the background for this study?

RB: Immunotherapy can be very effective for patients with many different cancers, such as melanoma, head and neck cancer, and lung cancer. However, immunotherapy has worked relatively poorly in ovarian cancer: Only about 10 percent of patients gain a benefit, and that benefit tends to be less substantial than for patients with other tumor types. The goal of this study was to understand why ovarian cancer is resistant to immunotherapy and determine if we could develop new therapeutic approaches to increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy.
weatheriscool
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Synthetic immunotherapy seeks out and destroys tumors in mice with aggressive cancers

by Stanford University Medical Center
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11- ... ssive.html
Activating the immune system at the site of a tumor can recruit and stimulate immune cells to destroy tumor cells. One strategy involves injecting immune-stimulating molecules directly into the tumor, but this method can be challenging for cancers that are not easily accessible.

Now, Stanford researchers have developed a new synthetic molecule that combines a tumor-targeting agent with another molecule that triggers immune activation. This tumor-targeted immunotherapy can be administered intravenously and makes its way to one or multiple tumor sites in the body, where it recruits immune cells to fight the cancer.

Three doses of this new immunotherapy prolonged the survival of six of nine laboratory mice with an aggressive triple negative breast cancer. Of the six, three appeared cured of their cancer over the duration of the monthslong study. A single dose of this molecule induced complete tumor regression in five of 10 mice. The synthetic molecule showed similar results in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer.

"We essentially cured some animals with just a few injections," said Jennifer Cochran, Ph.D., the Shriram Chair of the Department of Bioengineering. "It was pretty astonishing. When we looked within the tumors, we saw they went from a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment to one full of activated B and T cells—similar to what happens when the immune-stimulating molecule is injected directly into the tumor. So, we're achieving intra-tumoral injection results but with an IV delivery."
weatheriscool
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Study identifies potential bile duct cancer biomarkers for urine test
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11- ... rkers.html
by Emily Head, Imperial College London
Early-stage research has found 10 metabolites associated with bile duct cancer which might one day help create a urine test to identify the cancer.

The work is the result of a collaboration between Imperial College London and the Khon Kaen University in Thailand, who are working together to understand and reduce the disproportionately high rates of bile duct cancer in the Isaan peoples from the North-Eastern region of Thailand and Laos. The research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In the UK, bile duct cancer is rare, with around two in every 100,000 people developing it, and the cause is unknown. However, in Thailand it affects more than 30 times that figure in the North-Eastern region alone (85 cases in every 100,000 people) with still higher figures across the river in Laos.

In Thailand, bile duct cancers are associated with the O. viverrini parasite which may be inadvertently eaten in raw, partially cooked, or fermented fish dishes. The parasite enters the bile ducts and causes damage which can then lead to cancer.

"Early detection of bile duct cancer is vital as it is often symptomless. This means it is often recognized late when it is hard to treat and surgery to remove the cancer is not possible. Other than surgery there are no currently effective treatments for bile duct cancer." says Professor Simon Taylor-Robinson, senior author of the study, and Imperial's Envoy for International Affairs.
weatheriscool
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A stealthy way to combat tumors
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11- ... umors.html
by Anne Trafton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Under the right circumstances, the body's T cells can detect and destroy cancer cells. However, in most cancer patients, T cells become disarmed once they enter the environment surrounding a tumor.

Scientists are now trying to find ways to help treat patients by jumpstarting those lackluster T cells. Much of the research in this field, known as cancer immunotherapy, has focused on finding ways to stimulate those T cells directly. MIT researchers have now uncovered a possible new way to indirectly activate those T cells, by recruiting a population of helper immune cells called dendritic cells.

In a new study, the researchers identified a specific subset of dendritic cells that have a unique way of activating T cells. These dendritic cells can cloak themselves in tumor proteins, allowing them to impersonate cancer cells and trigger a strong T cell response.

"We knew that dendritic cells are incredibly important for the antitumor immune response, but we didn't know what really constitutes the optimal dendritic cell response to a tumor," says Stefani Spranger, the Howard S. and Linda B. Stern Career Development Professor at MIT and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

The results suggest that finding ways to stimulate that specific population of dendritic cells could help to enhance the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy, she says. In a study of mice, the researchers showed that stimulating these dendritic cells slowed the growth of melanoma and colon tumors.
weatheriscool
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Safely delivering radiation to cancer patients in a 'FLASH'

by Ben Kennedy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-safely-ca ... ients.html
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have shown for the first time the potential for linear induction accelerators (LIAs) to deliver effective, targeted doses of "FLASH" radiation to cancer patients. The new technique selectively kills cancer cells with minimal damage to healthy cells. The approach is outlined in a Scientific Reports paper.

For decades, cancer treatment has often meant weeks of low-dose radiation in hopes of delivering enough to malignant cells without too much damage to the patient's healthy cells. Efforts to deliver a rapid, high, targeted dose of therapy radiation, or FLASH radiotherapy (FLASH-RT) at the required depth, have required large, complex machines the size of gymnasiums and have so far proven impractical for clinical use. In the Scientific Reports paper, the authors note that LIAs powerful enough to deliver the necessary dose rate to cancer cells can be built only 3 meters long.

Developed as part of the Laboratory's stockpile stewardship program, powerful LIAs have been in use at LLNL since the 1960s in nuclear and stockpile experiments. Standard RF and microwave accelerators were not sufficiently powerful. At Site 300, the Nevada Test Site and Los Alamos National Laboratory, large versions of these accelerators are used to deliver flashes of radiation, some in a sequence to produce a motion-picture "flipbook" of a simulated nuclear implosions. Both of these uses in LLNL's weapons program, said Laboratory scientist and lead author Stephen Sampayan, have underpinned its potential use in cancer therapy. Although LIAs have been in use for decades, he said they were not previously considered for use in clinical applications, as the industry is unfamiliar with LIAs and devices can sometimes be rather large.
weatheriscool
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Magnetic resonance imaging and artificial intelligence can detect early signs of tumor cell death after novel therapy
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12- ... gence.html
by Massachusetts General Hospital

In a recent study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has demonstrated that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to detect early signs of tumor cell death in response to a novel virus-based cancer therapy.

Recently, a promising therapeutic virus that selectively kills cancer cells while sparing normal tissue has sparked hope for treating aggressive brain tumors. To further optimize the virus-based therapy, frequent non-invasive monitoring of the treatment response must be performed. This monitoring is crucial for understanding the interactions between the virus and cancer cells, such as the extent of virus spread within the tumor and therapeutic response.

The researchers used quantitative molecular MRI images to measure multiple tissue properties, including tissue pH and protein concentration, that are altered with cell-death. This method allows therapeutic response monitoring much earlier than with previous techniques. The treatment responses were visible just 48 hours after viral therapy, long before any changes in tumor volume were observed.

"We programmed an MRI scanner to create unique signal "fingerprints" for different molecular compounds and cellular pH. A deep learning neural network was then used to decode the fingerprints and generate quantitative pH and molecular maps," says Christian Farrar, Ph.D., an investigator and faculty at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. "The MRI molecular fingerprinting method was validated in a mouse brain tumor study where the tumors were treated with a novel virus-based therapy that selectively killed cancer cells."
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