Cancer News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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Stem cell discoveries hold potential to improve cancer treatment
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01- ... ancer.html
by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Two recent discoveries by stem cell scientists at Cedars-Sinai may help make cancer treatment more efficient and shorten the time it takes for people to recover from radiation and chemotherapy.

In the first study, published in the journal Blood, investigators discovered a protein that is expressed by blood stem cells that could aid in identifying, studying and deploying the cells for treatments.

"We show that this protein, syndecan-2, identifies primitive blood stem cells and it regulates stem cell function," said John Chute, MD, director of the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy at Cedars-Sinai and senior author of the study.

Blood stem cells are found in small quantities in the bone marrow and in peripheral blood—the type that travels through the heart, arteries, capillaries and veins. These stem cells are of interest to scientists because they produce all blood cells and immune cells in the body. They are used in the curative treatment of people with leukemia and lymphoma.

This approach faces a major challenge: Hematopoietic stem cells make up less than 0.01% of cells in the bone marrow and peripheral blood, and there is not yet a good way to separate them from other cells. This means that when people receive infusions of bone marrow and peripheral blood cells, they get a tiny number of stem cells that are therapeutic along with a lot of other cells that are not.
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New Brain Cancer Guidelines to Improve Care and Patient Survival
January 26, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/941238

Introduction:
(University of Virginia Health System via EurekAlert) New guidelines for treating cancers that have spread to the brain are poised to improve care for patients and help many live longer, better lives.

The new guidelines come from an expert panel assembled by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). The panel included a diverse range of top cancer doctors, including UVA Cancer Center’s David Schiff, MD, as well as a patient representative.

The guidelines speak to the massive advances in care for brain metastases (cancers that have spread to the brain) over the last few decades. Attempts to develop guidelines in the 1970s largely emphasized steroids and whole-brain radiation therapy, without controlled, randomized studies to guide the use of surgery and chemotherapy.

The new guidelines are far more encompassing and far more evidence-based. They will help doctors and patients make the best treatment decisions and achieve the best outcomes.

“When I started in this field 30 years ago, the average survival with brain metastases was 4 months, and most patients died from the brain disease. With improvements in therapies, fewer than one-quarter of patients die from the brain metastases, and some patients live years or are even cured,” said Schiff, a co-chair of the ASCO panel and the co-director of UVA Cancer Center’s Neuro-Oncology Center. “Equally importantly, the use of advanced localized radiation techniques and new targeted chemotherapies and immunotherapies have improved the quality of survival for most patients suffering from brain metastases.”
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caltrek
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Acceleration of Cancer Biomarker Detection for Point of Care Diagnostics
January 28, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/941670

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) The detection and quantification of cancer-associated molecular biomarkers in body fluids, or liquid biopsies, prove minimally invasive in early cancer diagnostics. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed an approach that accelerates the detection of cancer biomarkers in samples taken at the time and place of patient care.

The study, published in ACS Nano, focused on the detection of a group of molecular biomarkers called microRNAs (miRNAs), small, single-stranded and noncoding RNAs that play important roles in gene expression and regulation. More importantly, miRNAs have been linked to certain cancer types and stages and as such, have garnered increased attention.

“Since tumor-specific mutations in miRNAs can be linked to tumor progression and metastasis, we can use miRNAs for early cancer diagnostics and therapy selection in the future,” said Congnyu Che, bioengineering graduate student in the Cunningham lab and first author of the paper. “Conventional detection methods take up to several hours for the person to get the result so our motivation was to accelerate the response time and make it shorter.”

Previously, the Cunningham group developed a technique to capture miRNA biomarkers, called Photonic Resonator Absorption Microscopy, that is capable of visualizing gold nanoparticles bound to target miRNAs. Using gold-only nanoparticles, it would take between 1-2 hours before the nanoparticles found their way to the biosensor. To accelerate the process, Che synthesized magnetic-plasmonic nanoparticles that incorporated iron materials that could then be attracted by a stationary magnet placed under the biosensor. The detection time was reduced to just one minute.

“Our approach has a one-minute response time, which means that the patient or doctor only waits for one minute before finding out the test result,” said Che.
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weatheriscool
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Doctors: Cancer patients cured a decade after gene therapy
Source: AP

By LAURA UNGAR
In 2010, doctors treated Doug Olson’s leukemia with an experimental gene therapy that transformed some of his blood cells into cancer killers. More than a decade later, there’s no sign of cancer in his body.

The treatment cured Olson and a second patient, according to the University of Pennsylvania doctors, who said it was the first time the therapy had been studied for so long.

“I’m doing great right now. I’m still very active. I was running half marathons until 2018,” said Olson, 75, who lives in Pleasanton, California. “This is a cure. And they don’t use the word lightly.”

His doctors describe the two cases in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. They say the two examples show the treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, can attack cancer immediately, then stay inside the body for years and evolve there to keep the disease at bay. Such so-called “living drugs” are now used by thousands around the world to treat certain blood cancers.



This 2021 photo provided by the family shows Doug Olson of Pleasanton, Calif., in Bend, Ore. In 2010, doctors treated Olson’s leukemia with an experimental gene therapy that transformed his own blood cells into cancer killers. More than a decade later, there's no sign of cancer in his body. (Family Photo via AP)
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/science-heal ... 0fa19b0a3d
weatheriscool
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Stable nanovesicles for the delivery of microRNA in cancer treatment
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-stable-na ... ancer.html
by ICMAB

Researchers at ICMAB present a study on new nanovesicles, known as quatsomes, which have been successfully engineered to encapsulate and deliver microRNAs for the treatment of tumors. These nanovesicles are produced by a simple GMP compliant process, an unavoidable requirement for the clinical use of new drug candidates. The study, published in Small, has been highlighted in the Women in Materials Science issue of Advanced Materials.

"The beauty of these quatsomes nanovesicles is that they can be easily engineered for the delivery of a variety of nucleic acids. Importantly, they are stable at room temperature, which avoids problems associated to cold chain requirements," says ICMAB researcher Nora Ventosa at the Nanomol-Bio Group.

MicroRNAs (also known as miRNAs) are small RNA molecules that can interfere with the stability of other RNA molecules (specifically, messenger RNA). They have many potential therapeutic uses due to the central role they play in major diseases. However, these molecules are still infrequently used in patients due to their instability in the bloodstream and their poor ability to reach specific tissues. A potential strategy to improve the clinical delivery of miRNAs in the body is to encapsulate them in tiny carriers that compensate its current shortcomings, without side effects and offering other complementary functions.
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RNA 'heroes' can disarm bad-actor proteins in leukemia: study
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02- ... kemia.html
by University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) believe it may be possible to prevent DNA changes driven by two proteins highly active in leukemia and other cancers. They reported a new mechanistic target for drug development Jan. 21 in the journal eLife.

The proteins, called METTL-3 and METTL-14, can alter the chemical structure of DNA—the molecular vault in cells that stores a person's genetic information. This is a new understanding, said article senior author Yogesh Gupta, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry at UT Health San Antonio's Greehey Children's Cancer Research Institute. For 27 years since the discovery of METTL-3 and -14, scientists believed that the proteins could only alter a separate molecule called RNA, but not DNA, he said.

RNA molecules, which float inside cells either reading out DNA instructions to make proteins or influencing this process indirectly, can form different shapes such as hairpins. Dr. Gupta, lead author; Shan Qi, a Ph.D. student in the Gupta lab; and the team observed that RNA of a certain structure like a hairpin can act as a glue that binds to METTL-3 and -14, preventing it from changing DNA's chemical structure.
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New method of targeting mutant RAS protein provides hope for cancer patients
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02- ... ancer.html
by Caroline Wallace, Medical University of South Carolina
As a 10-year journey comes to fruition, Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Hollings Cancer Center researcher John O'Bryan, Ph.D., and colleagues have demonstrated a new therapeutic way to block a protein that is frequently mutated in cancers. These proof-of-principle findings were published on Feb. 8 in Cell Reports. This work, which involves inhibiting the oncogenic protein RAS using small molecules, lays a strong foundation for the development of clinical anti-cancer therapies.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 1.9 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed this year. Based on the urgent need for more effective therapies, researchers are always on the search for elusive treatments that can affect many cancers.

O'Bryan, who is a professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the Medical University of South Carolina, said, "RAS is one of the most central and critical regulators of cell proliferation, and it is also the most mutated in cancers. Mutated RAS drives the growth of tumors. This makes it an attractive therapeutic target."
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Lab results show promise for future pancreatic cancer treatment
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02- ... ancer.html
by University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois Chicago researchers have developed a compound that may one day offer hope for pancreatic cancer treatment.

A pre-clinical study of the experimental compound shows that it more than doubles the average survival time for mice with pancreatic cancer, and that survival time was extended further when combined with immunotherapy.

Led by Ajay Rana, professor of surgery at the UIC College of Medicine and member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center, the study describes the experiments and how the compound—called XP-524—works.

XP-524 alters two proteins involved in the formation of several tumor types—bromodomain and extra-terminal motif (BET) and histone acetyltransferase EP300/CBP (EP300). The compound blocks these proteins, which helps to reactivate immune responses to the most common type of pancreatic cancer, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
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Researchers develop a nanoparticle-based drug delivery system based on corn to target cancer cells
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-nanoparti ... -corn.html
by Tokyo University of ScienceNishikawa from Tokyo University of Science

Nanomaterials have revolutionized the world of cancer therapy, and plant-derived nanoparticles have the added advantage of being cost-effective and easy to mass produce. Researchers from Tokyo University of Science have recently developed novel corn-derived bionanoparticles for targeting cancer cells directly, via an immune mechanism. The results are encouraging, and the technique has demonstrated efficacy in treating tumor-bearing laboratory mice. Moreover, no serious adverse effects have been reported in mice so far.

Nanoparticles, or particles whose size varies between 1 and 100 nanometers, have shown tremendous potential in many areas of science and technology, including therapeutics. However, conventional, synthetic nanoparticles are complicated and expensive to produce. Extracellular vesicles (EVs), which have emerged as an alternative option to synthetic nanoparticles, show challenges for mass production.

Another recently emerging option is that of plant-derived nanoparticles (NPs), which can be easily produced in high levels at relatively lower costs. Like EVs, these nanoparticle-based systems also contain bioactive molecules, including polyphenols (which are known antioxidants) and microRNA, and they can deliver drugs to target organs in our bodies.
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Finding a new biomarker and drug target in breast cancer

by Laurie Fickman, University of Houston
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02- ... ancer.html
After examining 398 proteins, a University of Houston College of Pharmacy researcher has found one that is an important biomarker predicting therapy outcome and a potential drug target in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, which makes up approximately 80% of all breast cancers. The growth of ER+ breast cancer is stimulated by estrogen.

"We found that NPY1R, a well-known G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) important in body weight regulation, serves as a predictor of endocrine sensitivity and of long-term outcomes in ER+ breast cancer, making it a potential drug target in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer," said Meghana Trivedi, associate professor of pharmacy practice and translational research and pharmacology and director of clinical and translational research at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy. Her findings are published in Scientific Reports.

GPCRs represent the largest superfamily of cell-surface proteins and are highly 'druggable' targets. Nearly 30–50% of all Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs target various GPCRs and are often used to treat various chronic diseases due to their excellent safety profile. But, GPCRs have not been systematically explored as biomarkers or drug targets in breast cancer until now.

"We interrogated the expression and phosphorylation status of 398 non-sensory GPCRs using the landmark breast cancer proteogenomics and phosphoproteomic dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas," said Trivedi. "We found NPY1R to be highly expressed in Luminal A subtype of breast cancer, which has overall favorable outcomes. However, its expression declined when the breast cancer cells developed resistance to endocrine therapy. We also reported that the inhibitory action of NPY on estradiol-stimulated growth of ER+ breast cancer cells was mediated by NPY1R. Our results demonstrated NPY1R expression as a predictor of endocrine sensitivity in ER+ breast cancer."
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