Cancer News and Discussions

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Machine learning can help predict patient response to cancer immunotherapy

by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... erapy.html
Predicting which patients will respond well to treatment is a quandary that has plagued the field of cancer immunotherapy for more than four decades. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy are one step closer to solving that problem. In a small study, they successfully trained a machine learning algorithm to predict, in hindsight, which patients with melanoma would respond to treatment and which would not respond.

The open-source program, DeepTCR, proved valuable as a predictive clinical tool, but it also functioned as a powerful instructor, teaching the researchers about the biological mechanisms underlying patients' responses to immunotherapy.

"DeepTCR's predictive power is exciting," says John-William Sidhom, M.D., Ph.D., first author of the study, "but what I found more fascinating is that we were able to view what the model learned about the immune system's response to immunotherapy. We can now exploit that information to develop more robust models, and possibly better treatment approaches, for many diseases, even those outside of oncology."

A summary of the research was published in the journal Science Advances.

DeepTCR was developed at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine by Sidhom when he was an M.D./Ph.D. student. It uses deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to recognize patterns in large volumes of data. In this case, the data is the amino acid sequences of proteins called T cell receptors (TCRs).
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Novel AI blood test detects liver cancer
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... ancer.html
by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

A novel artificial intelligence blood testing technology developed and used by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers to successfully detect lung cancer in a 2021 study has now detected more than 80% of liver cancers in a new study of 724 people.

The blood test, called DELFI (DNA evaluation of fragments for early interception) detects fragmentation changes among DNA from cancer cells shed into the bloodstream, known as cell-free DNA (cfDNA). In the most recent study, investigators used the DELFI technology on blood plasma samples obtained from 724 individuals in the U.S., the European Union (E.U.) and Hong Kong to detect hepatocellular cancer (HCC), a type of liver cancer.

The researchers believe this is the first genome-wide fragmentation analysis independently validated in two high-risk populations and across different racial and ethnic groups with different causes associated with their liver cancers.

Their findings were reported Nov. 18 in Cancer Discovery and at the American Association for Cancer Research Special Conference: Precision Prevention, Early Detection, and Interception of Cancer.
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Phase 3 clinical trial: Brain cancer vaccine shows promising results
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... ancer.html
by King's College London

A vaccine (DCVax-L), trialed at King's College Hospital and other centers around the world, using patients' immune cells to target brain cancer can extend survival by many months or, in some cases, years, the final unblinded results from a phase 3 clinical trial has shown. The final results were published on Thursday, November 17 in JAMA Oncology.

This is the first time in 17 years that such significant outcomes have been achieved in a phase 3 trial for a systemic treatment in newly diagnosed glioblastoma, and the first time in 27 years that any treatment has been shown to extend survival in recurrent glioblastoma.

The vaccine is created for each patient individually by isolating specific immune cells, known as dendritic cells, from their blood. These cells are then primed with biomarkers from a sample of the patient's tumor. When the vaccine containing the cells is injected back into the patient, it shares that information so that the body's entire immune system recognizes and attacks the target.
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New hope for kidney cancer treatment using existing drugs
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11- ... drugs.html
by Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
The most comprehensive study of kidney cancer at single-cell level has discovered a potential drug target to treat renal cell carcinoma, a cancer with a high mortality rate that is hard to detect. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals identified immune cells known as macrophages that express the gene IL1B as crucial to tumor development.

The study, published today in Cancer Cell, recommends IL1B macrophages as a promising therapeutic target to treat renal cell carcinoma given that this cell type has already been targeted using existing drugs that prevent lung cancer. The next step, which is already being explored, will be clinical trials to prove that targeting IL1B can be used to effectively prevent renal cell carcinoma from forming or progressing.

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the seventh most common cancer in the UK, with three quarters of cases and the majority of deaths caused by clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). The disease has a 50% mortality rate, partially because three in five patients show no symptoms until the cancer is at a late stage.
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weatheriscool
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Researchers develop a safer carrier for cancer vaccines
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-safer-car ... cines.html
by National University of Singapore
Lipid nanoparticle (LNP)-based messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines have recently emerged as a promising strategy for the prevention and treatment of cancers, as well as infectious diseases. LNPs are carriers that safely and effectively deliver nucleic acid vaccines, eliciting a strong immune response.

One milestone is the clinical use of leading LNP mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, which exhibits different degrees of protection efficacy, as well as some side effects. As these vaccines are known to be safe, efficient and easily developed, they have been widely used as protection against various human diseases, especially malignant cancers. Despite its high take-up rate in cancer treatment, the common side effects of pain, swelling, and fever, continue to be present, potentially due to inflammatory qualities within the LNPs, that form part of vaccines.

In the study published in Advanced Materials, Prof Chen and his team synthesized a series of alternating copolymers, which can work as vehicles and help mRNA cargos deliver into cells. After entry into cells, mRNA is translated into protein antigens and kill the disease. In the process, the stability of polymeric nanoparticle (PNP) is maintained, which can ensure accurate transmission of all genetic information to the targeted action sites of the antigen to kill the disease. This ensures the efficacy and safety of the vaccine.
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Federated machine learning enables the largest brain tumor study to-date, without sharing patient data
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12- ... brain.html
by Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Researchers at Penn Medicine and Intel Corporation led the largest-to-date global machine learning effort to securely aggregate knowledge from brain scans of 6,314 glioblastoma (GBM) patients at 71 sites around the globe and develop a model that can enhance identification and prediction of boundaries in three tumor sub-compartments, without compromising patient privacy. Their findings were published today in Nature Communications.

"This is the single largest and most diverse dataset of glioblastoma patients ever considered in the literature, and was made possible through federated learning," said senior author Spyridon Bakas, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and Radiology, at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "The more data we can feed into machine learning models, the more accurate they become, which in turn can improve our ability to understand, treat, and remove glioblastoma in patients with more precision."

Researchers studying rare conditions, like GBM, an aggressive type of brain tumor, often have patient populations limited to their own institution or geographical location. Due to privacy protection legislation, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) in the United States, and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, data sharing collaborations across institutions without compromising patient privacy data is a major obstacle for many healthcare providers.
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Researchers develop a new cancer testing method that makes regular monitoring affordable
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12- ... gular.html
by National University of Singapore
Scientists from the National University of (NUS) have discovered a novel low-cost method of testing for cancers. Called the Heatrich-BS assay, this new test sequences clinical samples that have been heated in order to isolate cancer-specific signatures found in a patient's blood.

The new method provides a promising non-invasive alternative to tissue biopsies. It costs around S$50 (approximately $37 USD) from start to finish, compared to other sequencing methods that can cost up to S$1,000 to conduct. Led by Assistant Professor Cheow Lih Feng, the team comprising researchers from the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering under the College of Design and Engineering as well as the NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology, is now exploring industry partnerships to bring their technology to market.

"When you have a S$50 test, it opens up a lot of avenues because it is affordable, so you can do the test quite regularly," said Asst. Prof. Cheow, pointing to the potential for their assay to be used in regular cancer monitoring.
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Drugs to prevent anxiety, stress reactions and inflammation found to reduce risk of metastases after tumor surgery
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12- ... ation.html
by Tel Aviv University
A short, simple and safe drug treatment developed at Tel Aviv University reduced the risk of the spread of cancer metastases after surgery to remove the primary tumor—according to the first clinical study of its kind conducted among 34 colon cancer patients operated on at Sheba Tel Hashomer Medical Center.

The research was led by Prof. Shamgar Ben-Eliyahu of TAU's Sagol School of Neuroscience and School of Psychological Sciences and Prof. Oded Zamora of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, and its results were published in the European Journal of Surgical Oncology.

At the same time, an overview of the theory and principles underlying the research was published in Nature Reviews Cancer.

Although surgery to remove primary tumors is the mainstay of all cancer treatments, the risk of metastases after tumor removal is estimated at 35% among colon cancer patients, with higher risk in patients with more advance stages of the disease.
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Could new cancer drugs come from potatoes and tomatoes?
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-cancer-dr ... atoes.html
by Frontiers

Everyone knows someone who has had cancer. In 2020, around 19 million new cases—and around 10 million deaths—were registered worldwide. Treatments are improving all the time, but can damage healthy cells or have severe side effects that are hard on patients. In the search for new, more targeted cancer drugs, traditional medicine offers many possible candidates.

A team of Polish scientists led by Magdalena Winkiel at Adam Mickiewicz University, publishing today in Frontiers in Pharmacology, has reviewed the bioactive compounds called glycoalkaloids, found in vegetables like potatoes and tomatoes, to demonstrate their potential to treat cancer.

"Scientists around the world are still searching for the drugs which will be lethal to cancer cells but at the same time safe for healthy cells," said Winkiel.

"It is not easy despite the advances in medicine and powerful development of modern treatment techniques. That is why it might be worth going back to medicinal plants that were used years ago with success in the treatment of various ailments. I believe that it is worth reexamining their properties and perhaps rediscovering their potential."
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