News • Research
CRISPR tool targets cancer and virus-infected cells precisely
A CRISPR-based tool called Cas12a2 can selectively eliminate cancer and virus-infected cells based on their RNA signature – with high precision and no off-target effects.
Search for: "apoptosis" - 63 articles found
News • Research on Antrodia cinnamomea
Promising fungal compound to fight cancer and inflammation
Studies have found that natural polysaccharides from a medical fungus endemic to Taiwan can not only effectively inhibit inflammation, but also fight the proliferation of lung cancer cells.
News • Electron-sink-enhanced nanoshells
A label-free method for trace detection of cancer
A new approach enables the detection of even trace amounts of cancer cells. The method leverages SERS for signal amplification, eliminating the need for fluorescent dyes.
News • Molecular mechanism discovered
Researchers find a way to stop harmful cells after cancer treatment
Senescent cells, which may appear after chemotherapy or radiotherapy, can jeopardize patients' recovery. A study describes a new mechanism to eliminate these cells in cancer patients.
News • Research on "double strike" mechanism
Induction of defective cell division could improve blood cancer therapy
Tumor cells are notorious for their rapid and uncontrolled division, and many cancer therapies aim to disrupt this. New findings suggest potential applications of apoptosis in blood cancer treatment.
News • Women's health
Endometriosis: exploring promising diagnostic tools
Endometriosis can cause abdominal pain and cramping before, during and after menstruation, and may lead to infertility. Now, researchers identified promising approaches for better early diagnosis.
News • Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL)
Personalised simulations predict outcomes for blood cancer treatment
Using genomic sequencing data, researchers have created personalised simulations of individual patients that can quantify the impact of genetic mutations on cancer cell behaviour.
News • New insights on shape and toxicity
Small, but mighty – how gold nanoparticles (actually) kill cancer
Smaller kills faster – this is what was previously thought about gold nanoparticles used to fight cancer cells. However, new research reveals a more complex picture of these interactions.
Article • Flow cytometry
Detecting and measuring nanoplastics in the blood stream
Plastics are a part of everyday life, and an increasingly concerning factor of global environmental pollution. They also have infiltrated our bodies as microparticles (MPs) and nanoparticles (NPs), found even in placentas supporting foetal life. And they are in our blood. Now, researchers in Spain have developed a new method to detect and measure nanoparticles in human peripheral blood that is…
News • Research on iron-dependent cell death
Liver cancer: Ferroptosis could open new therapeutic avenues
Researchers in Frankfurt have now been able to show how ferroptosis can be used to make immunotherapies against liver cancer more effective in mice.
Article • High-intensity focused ultrasound
HIFU ablation treatment for benign thyroid nodules
High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation is a noninvasively treatment for benign thyroid nodules that are causing distress to patients. Brian H. H. Lang, MD, Clinical Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Hong Kong, and chief of the Division of Endocrine Surgery at Queen Mary Hospital, is a preeminent investigator, proponent, and pioneer of this technique. He…
News • Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma
Promising new treatment for deadly pediatric tumor
Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma is a rare pediatric tumor. For more than 40 years there has not been any new development regarding treatment. Research led by Prof. Dr. Anton Henssen at Charité University Berlin has now identified a new therapeutic option, using a drug that is currently under investigation for other types of cancer.
News • Regenerative medicine
Injectable stem cell assembly for cartilage regeneration
Researchers have established an injectable hybrid inorganic nanoscaffold-templated stem cell assembly and applied it to the regeneration of critically-sized cartilage defects.
News • Cancer research
Origins of metastasis unraveled
For a long time, the origin of metastasis remained obscure. Now, scientists have discovered some of the mechanisms these cells arise.
News • Diagnostic
Potential therapeutic target for lung cancer
Scientists reported the key role of histone acetylation-regulated long noncoding RNA termed as lysosome cell death regulator (LCDR) in tumor survival, providing a potential diagnostic and therapeutic target for lung cancer.
News • Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva
FOP: Origin of rare disease
A mutation in the gene that causes fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) doesn’t just cause extra bone growth but is tied to a problem in generating new muscle tissue after injury.
News • Impaired proliferation and induced cell death
Newfound mechanism could stop cancer cells in their tracks
Researchers have identified a mechanism that impairs the proliferation of cancer cells and induces their death without affecting healthy cells. This could lead to improved cancer treatment.
News • Chemotherapy approach
New receptor insights might leave cancer bitter
Bitter taste receptors do not only support humans in tasting. They are also found on cancer cells. A team led by Veronika Somoza from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna and the German Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich has investigated the role they play there. For this purpose, the scientists compiled and evaluated extensive…
News • Understanding oncogenesis
How normal cells turn into liver cancer cells
Researchers at the University of Helsinki could show for the first time that normal human fibroblast cells can be converted to specific cancer cells using only factors that are commonly detected in actual human patients. Previous studies have achieved this only by using powerful viral factors that are not common in human cancers. Since many human cancer types still lack specific diagnostic…
News • Promising research tool
World's first digital cancer cell model
Computer models have been standard tools in basic biomedical research for many years. However, around 70 years after the first publication of an ion current model of a nerve cell by Hodgkin & Huxley in 1952, researchers at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), in collaboration with the Medical University of Graz and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, have finally…
News • Tumor growth
New insights into colorectal cancer
Researchers have found a surprising effect of the stem cell-regulating growth factor R-spondin in intestinal cancer.
News • HNSCC diagnostics
Head and neck cancer: Novel prognostic biomarker could double survival
A recent study conducted by the Faculty of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CU Medicine) discovered a novel genetic biomarker which can predict the survival of head and neck cancer patients. There are over 0.7 million new head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cases globally each year. However, currently there is no clinical implementation of any genetic biomarker to…
News • Programmed cell death
Cellular mechanism protecting against cancer
Susanne Hellmuth and Olaf Stemmann from the Chair of Genetics at the University of Bayreuth have discovered a natural protective mechanism that leads to the programmed death of potentially diseased cells.
News • Ultrasound monitoring
'Smart bra' to detect early-stage breast cancer
Students from EPFL in Switzerland teamed up with startup IcosaMed to develop the SmartBra – the first piece of smart clothing that can be used for cancer prevention. “Our smart-clothing technology is designed to detect cancer at the earliest stages. It uses a non-invasive, painless method based on frequent ultrasound monitoring,” says Hugo Vuillet, one of the students on the development…
News • Study offers new insights
Sepsis treatment: Destroying DNA to save the genome
Sepsis—the body's own immune response gone against it—is a major health problem worldwide. It is basically a "hyper" immune response by the body to infection or injury, and is characterized by hyperinflammation, immune system paralysis, cell death, liver and kidney failure, blood clots, and even hemorrhage. An estimated 30 million people suffer from sepsis every year, of which 20%…
News • Altered chromosomes
Breast cancer: targeted therapy can lead to treatment resistance
If chromosomes are unevenly distributed or otherwise altered during cell division, this normally damages the daughter cells and impairs their viability. Not in cancer cells, however, in which chromosome instability can actually confer a growth advantage under certain circumstances. Moreover, as scientists from the German Cancer Research Center have now demonstrated in mice, changes in the…
News • Neurology
Protein protects the mitochondria and rescues neurons from stroke-like damage
A protein newly discovered by scientists in China is aiding in the dramatic reversal of stroke-like damage in laboratory animals and may one day rescue humans from neurological injury, the research team is predicting.
News • Iron dependent cell death
Ferroptosis could be key for new anticancer approach
A team of researchers lead by Helmholtz Zentrum München and the University of Würzburg identified an enzyme as a novel and strong inhibitor of ferroptosis, the iron dependent form of cell death: ferroptosis suppressor protein-1, short FSP1. This protein is expressed in a variety of cancer cell lines and therefore represents an attractive drug target for cancer treatment.
News • Therapy-resistant cells
Von Hippel-Lindau: How to kill hereditary cancer
Researchers identified how to kill therapy-resistant cells in hypoxic tumors and in cells arising in the von Hippel-Lindau hereditary cancer. In a recent publication in PNAS, the research group identified how to kill therapy-resistant cells in hypoxic tumors and in cells arising in the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) hereditary cancer.
News • Mitochondria mystery solved
Researchers uncover key to greater efficacy in cancer treatment
Why do cancer cells react differently to treatments? Researchers from Mount Sinai and IBM have discovered a novel clue in explaining how cancer cells with identical genomes can respond differently to the same therapy. In a Nature Communications paper, researchers reveal for the first time that the number of mitochondria in a cell is, in great part, associated with how the cancer responds to drug…
News • Cellular recycling
Can autophagy stop cancer before it starts?
Just as plastic tips protect the ends of shoelaces and keep them from fraying when we tie them, molecular tips called telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes and keep them from fusing when cells continually divide and duplicate their DNA. But while losing the plastic tips may lead to messy laces, telomere loss may lead to cancer. Salk Institute scientists studying the relationship of telomeres…
News • Nanoparticle therapy
Putting a target on breast cancer
The complex structure of breast tumours makes treatment a medical challenge. A promising, novel selenium-based breast cancer nanoparticle therapy by the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib) together with other partners in the EU-project Neosetac could change that: It has proved to boost the active agent delivery and assure it's active only in the target tissue while also bringing…
News • Cell biology
Improved stem cell transplantation may be on the horizon
Researchers in Germany have demonstrated that hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplants can be improved by treatments that temporarily prevent the stem cells from dying.
News • Research subjects
Mice and men - not as equal as medicine would like to think
The mouse is the most widely used model organism to understand human genetics, biology, and diseases in the research setting. But new research findings have revealed important divergences between the species which scientists will need to understand better through further investigation.
News • Ophthalmology
New eye test detects earliest signs of glaucoma
A simple eye test could help solve the biggest global cause of irreversible blindness, glaucoma. In clinical trials, the pioneering diagnostic test - developed by researchers at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and the Western Eye Hospital - allowed doctors to see individual nerve cell death in the back of the eye.
News • Neurodegenerative diseases
Brain cell ‘executioner’ identified
Despite their different triggers, the same molecular chain of events appears to be responsible for brain cell death from strokes, injuries and even such neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer's. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have pinpointed the protein at the end of that chain of events, one that delivers the fatal strike by carving up a cell's DNA. The find, they say, potentially…
News • Oncology
Nanoparticle creates ‘wave of destruction’ in cancer cells
Nanoparticles known as Cornell dots, or C dots, have shown great promise as a therapeutic tool in the detection and treatment of cancer. Now, the ultrasmall particles – developed more than a dozen years ago by Ulrich Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering at Cornell University – have shown they can do something even better: kill cancer cells without attaching a cytotoxic drug.
Article • Transplants
Cell-free DNA offers several advantages
As part of a national, joint research project in cooperation with Chronix Biomedical (San Jose, CA/USA/Göttingen/Germany), Professor Michael Oellerich MD is on new biomarkers in organ transplantation, aiming to develop personalised immunosuppression for patients. This also entails the development of molecular test procedures, among others for the early detection of rejection. The keyword here is…
News • Immune system
How can two types of immune cells arise from one?
The fates of immune cells can be decided at the initial division of a cell. Researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered that the production of daughter cells with different roles in the immune system is driven by the lopsided distribution of the signaling protein c-Myc. Nudging c-Myc in one direction or the other could make vaccines more effective or advance…
News • Chemotherapy
Novel compounds could be less toxic
A novel class of compounds developed by a University of Saskatchewan (U of S)-led research team could yield more effective and less toxic chemotherapy drugs to treat cancer. Team leader Jonathan Dimmock, a medicinal chemistry researcher in the U of S College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, explained their compounds work by interacting with thiols, naturally occurring chemicals that perform several…
News • Fighting cancer
Stopping tumour cells killing surrounding tissue
Tumours kill off surrounding cells to make room to grow, according to new research from the University of Cambridge. Although the study was carried out using fruit flies, its findings suggest that drugs to prevent, rather than encourage, cell death might be effective at fighting cancer – contrary to how many of the current chemotherapy drugs work.
Probing the mystery of how cancer cells die
You’ve probably never heard of “sphingolipids” before. But these curiously named organic compounds play a vital role in one of humanity’s most well-known diseases: cancer.
First synthesis of molecules that cause rapid cell death in cancer
Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues have carried out the first total syntheses of certain compounds involved in excessive cell death in leukemia.
Article • Research
Genetic alterations
This article discusses examples of applications of genetic analyses in coagulation disorders and haematological and oncological diseases. Professor Christine Mannhalter highlights the impact changes have on the occurrence and severity of diseases and their influence on therapy response. Report: Christine Mannhalter
Article • Screening
Can, should and must MRI replace mammography?
In breast cancer care each patient receives personalised, highly effective diagnosis and treatment procedures. In breast diagnostics this mainly revolves around new MRI scanning procedures that allow the quantification of biological and physiological processes on a cellular and molecular level.
Validating imaging biomarkers
New imaging biomarkers are helping radiology to play a greater role in new drug developments.
The role of the immune system in cancer therapy
Apart from tumour immunologists themselves, for a long time oncologists have underestimated the role of the immune system in cancer treatment. Nonetheless, in recent years increasing attention has been given to this aspect of cancer.
In their infancy but new PET tracers have a rich future
Dr Peter Choyke, Chief of the Molecular Imaging Programme at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, USA, believes that new tracers will have an evolving role to play and represent an exciting development in the imaging of cancers.
IFCC-WORLDLAB BERLIN 2011
‘Heal the world’ sang the Berliner Rundfunk Children’s Choir and Youth Orchestra, and thus aptly began the joint 21st International Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine and the 19th IFCC-EFCC European Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, attracting 4,418 delegates, 2,833 visitors and 1,058 exhibiting staff to Berlin in May.
Article • PSA
A two-step biomarker approach for prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in males in developed countries and the sixth leading cause of cancer death worldwide. One reason for the increase in diagnosis is the widespread uptake of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, capable of detecting slow growing cancers that might otherwise go undetected.
Breast imaging in 2025
A leading radiologist is forecasting a ‘paradigm shift’ in breast imaging. Dr Peter Brader, from Department of Radiology, Division for Molecular and Gender Imaging, Medical University Vienna, envisages that diagnosis and treatment will move from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to one of personalised molecular medicine by 2025. He also foresees greater use of theranostics with combinations…
Cryonics: an ambulance through time or the coldest grave ever?
Who has not dreamed at least once to live in future times? Who would not want that one’s today incurable diseases may be cured in the future by medical progress? Long-time cryopreservation immediately after death is the betting ticket to that future.
Using fruit flies to help understand cancer
Small and with a life cycle of just two weeks, fruit flies are seen by many as pests and a problem all year round. However, for nearly a century, the humble insect, officially known as Drosophila melanogaster, which measures no more than 3mm, has performed a vital role in genetics and developmental biology. Fruit flies are genetically diverse and easy to use in research, helping scientists in a…
Cancer tumours that fight themselves
Cancer cells producing toxins that destroy tumours – could this be a future treatment for cancer? Researchers at Lund University have achieved good results in tests on both cells and animals. The results have now been presented in the respected scientific journal Cancer Research.
PET-CT vs. whole-body MRI
For many indications, because PET-CT produces a very high accuracy for many tumours, this modality is the gold standard, Prof. Reiser confirmed. It also enables good observation of the course of the disease. After an injection of radioactive tracers we can visualise increased metabolic activity in great detail and with high sensitivity. This is an increasingly important issue not only in primary…
Spotlight Cholesterol: the role of diet, statins and genetics
The inverse epidemiological association between serum levels of HDL-C and risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) is graded and has been validated in multiple studies. However, there is remaining controversy whether a low HDL-C should not predominantly be considered a marker of poor lifestyle (obesity, lack of exercise, hypertriglyceridemia, diet, etc.), rather than a primary causal agent for…
MR diffusion and perfusion
Can they replace PET? By Marco Essig MD, Professor of Radiology at the German Cancer Research Centre, outlines relevant presentations at the ECR.
Cardiovascular molecular imaging - is it ready for internal medicine diagnostics?
Imaging in Internal Medicine is among the main topics for 114th Congress of the German Society of Internal Medicine (March. Wiesbaden). Specialists in internal medicine, radiologists, and nuclear medicine have developed a programme that will not only provide an overview of the values of modern imaging procedures but also tackle controversial subjects.
Hot Spots:
A next-generation diagnostic tool for cardiovascular disease, using a nanoscale iron particle, is now under development at a unique industry-government-university named Nano AG. A report from Siemens describes the research and progress at the centre
Test combination predicts high risk of relapse and death in bladder cancer patients
A new testing approach has effectively identified patients at the highest risk of cancer relapse after bladder cancer surgery, according to a study published in the February issue of The Lancet Oncology http://oncology.thelancet.com. Vol 8 Feb 2007 91.
The coming era of genetic medicine
By Stefan G Ruehm MD PhD, Associate Professor of Radiology, at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, California
Iron oxide nanoparticles for biomedical MR imaging
Researchers open up new opportunities for cellular and molecular MR imaging.
Hormone-resistant prostate cancer
Prostate cancer, the most common neoplasm in men, often progresses from an androgen-dependant state (and is commonly treated by androgen ablation therapies) to a hormone-refractory stage, therefore making hormone therapy ineffective. The response duration to androgen ablation therapy is finite and ultimately most prostate cancer will become hormone-insensitive.
