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.
Melanomas account among the eight most frequent deadly cancers in Europe and Northern America. Two major clinical criteria separate melanomas from most other cancers: the risk to die from a melanoma is a question of being less or more than 1 mm – and not a question of cm. About 95% of patients with melanomas ≤0.5 mm in thickness are clinically cured by early detection and appropriate melanoma…
A team of researchers at Yale found that a treatment using bioadhesive nanoparticles loaded with a potent chemotherapy drug proved more effective and less toxic than conventional treatments for gynecological cancer.
Italian-led research has highlighted the value of utilising additional screening technologies to help diagnose breast cancer in some women. Interim analysis from the Adjunct Screening with Tomosynthesis or Ultrasound in Women with Mammography-Negative Dense Breasts (ASTOUND) study has delivered evidence of the potential benefit of adding either ultrasound or tomosynthesis to standard mammograms…
New research confirms that an innovative procedure combining MRI and ultrasound to create a 3D image of the prostate can more accurately locate suspicious areas and help diagnose whether it’s prostate cancer.
Changes in the genetic make-up of tissue samples can be detected quickly and easily using a new method based on nanotechnology. This report researchers from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel in first clinical tests with genetic mutations in patients with malignant melanoma.
A small device implanted under the skin can improve breast cancer survival by catching cancer cells, slowing the development of metastatic tumors in other organs and allowing time to intervene with surgery or other therapies. These findings suggest a path for identifying metastatic cancer early and intervening to improve outcomes.
To treat or not to treat? That is the question researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) hope to answer with a new advance that could help doctors and their cancer patients decide if a particular therapy would be worth pursuing.
NIBIB researchers have created a nanovaccine that could make a current approach to cancer immunotherapy more effective while also reducing side effects. The nanovaccine helps to efficiently deliver a unique DNA sequence to immune cells – a sequence derived from bacterial DNA and used to trigger an immune reaction. The nanovaccine also protects the DNA from being destroyed inside the body, where…
Multidrug resistance (MDR) is the mechanism by which many cancers develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs, resulting in minimal cell death and the expansion of drug-resistant tumors. To address the problem of resistance, researchers at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed nanoparticles that…
Researchers at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute sprayed a dye on oesophageal tissue samples taken from people with Barrett’s oesophagus – a condition that increases the risk of developing oesophageal cancer. The dye sticks to healthy oesophageal cells but not to pre-cancerous cells. They then shone near-infrared light - which is just beyond the red colours that our eyes can normally…
Many cancers only become a mortal danger if they form metastases elsewhere in the body. Such secondary tumours are formed when individual cells break away from the main tumour and travel through the bloodstream to distant areas of the body. To do so, they have to pass through the walls of small blood vessels. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim and…
One of the many reasons tumors are so difficult to treat is that they are able to adapt whenever they are exposed to unfavorable conditions. Hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen, is one example of a phenomenon that should weaken the tumor, but instead, the malignant cells are able to compensate and drive more aggressive disease behavior.
With a unique approach that draws on 3-D printing technologies, a team of University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers is developing new tools for understanding how ovarian cancer develops in women.
When two Spanish oncologists launched the first independent Spanish oncology forum this May in Madrid, European Hospital’s correspondent spoke with Dr Javier Cortés, co-organiser of the event, to find out more about its expected impact in their field.
Australian researchers have made a world-first breakthrough in the early detection of patients' resistance to a common treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia. The discovery offers some hope that the patients' treatment could be changed sooner to improve their chances of survival.
Bladder cancer is the 2nd most frequent urological cancer in men in Europe and the 7th most common cause of cancer-specific mortality.* Despite the fact that it is one of the most expensive cancers to treat from diagnosis to death**, it is still underrepresented in public awareness and cancer research. IPSEN aims to make a difference in providing Innovators in BC® – a website for international…
While active surveillance is often recommended for patients with nonaggressive prostate cancer to reduce unnecessary treatment, the challenge for clinicians is to monitor and distinguish early-stage tumors from advanced cancers. A team of scientists led by researchers from Roswell Park Cancer Institute have demonstrated that photoacoustic imaging (PAI) may be an effective tool for more accurately…
Doctors and scientists at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City printed and used a 3D kidney to help save a patient's organ during a complicated tumor-removal procedural. The 3D-printed model allowed doctors to study the patient's kidney in 3D to determine how to best remove the tumor as it was located in a precarious location adjacent to vital arteries and veins. Thanks to the model of…
A new nano-fabricated platform for observing brain cancer cells provides a much more detailed look at how the cells migrate and a more accurate post-surgery prognosis for brain cancer (glioblastoma) patients.
Leading oncologists from across Europe and the UK have joined the debate over the British referendum on whether to leave the EU, adding their support to the campaign to remain in the European Union. Report: Mark Nicholls
An international team led by researchers at the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) in Vienna and the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore discovered that genetically determined breast cancer can be largely prevented by blocking a bone gene. An already approved drug could be quickly available and would then be the first breast cancer prevention drug.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the cobas EGFR Mutation Test v2, a blood-based companion diagnostic for the cancer drug Tarceva (erlotinib). This is the first FDA-approved, blood-based genetic test that can detect epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene mutations in non-small cell lung cancer patients. Such mutations are present in approximately 10-20 percent of non-small cell…
A team from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste has obtained very promising results by applying gene therapy to glioblastoma. Tests in vitro and in vivo on mice provided very clear-cut results, and modelling demonstrates that the treatment targets at least six different points of tumour metabolism. Gene therapy, a technique that selectively attacks a tumour, might…
Last year, scientists at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) revealed that by measuring the proportion of both immune and cancerous cells in tumours, or ‘tumour purity,’ clinicians could more precisely predict the success of certain precision therapies. A key aspect of the discovery was access to over 10,000 samples constituting 21 different cancers.
