Article • Awareness
Focus on cancer
From solid tumors to metastatic carcinomas and leukemia: cancer is among the most common causes of death. Keep reading for latest developments in early detection, staging, therapy and research.
Oncology
News • BRCA and prostate, pancreatic cancers
Faulty 'breast cancer gene' BRCA also dangerous for men
Faulty versions of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are well known to increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Now, they have been linked to several other cancers, including those that affect men.
Article • Multi-disciplinary approach
Nurturing integrated diagnostics in oncology
Under the roof of integrated diagnostics, radiology, laboratory medicine and pathology are forming a powerful alliance. Hedvig Hricak, MD, PhD, explains the potential for cancer patients and details the role of radiologists within the construct.
News • Glioblastoma
Blood test for brain tumors possible
Researchers at the University of Sussex are one step further to developing a blood test capable of diagnosing the most aggressive form of brain tumour.
Article • Experts point out lack of diverse data
AI in skin cancer detection: darker skin, inferior results?
Does artificial intelligence (AI) need more diversity? This aspect is brought up by experts in the context of AI systems to diagnose skin cancer. Their concern: images used to train such programs do not include data on a wide range of skin colours, leading to inferior results when diagnosing non-white patients.
Article • Cancer mortality study
Does ethnicity affect brain tumour survival?
New research has pinpointed ethnicity as a potential factor in brain tumour survival. A UK study showed that white British people who have been diagnosed with a malignant primary brain tumour appear to have an increased one-year mortality than patients from at least four other ethnic groups.
News • Oncology
New blood test identifies if a patient has cancer
Researchers outline a new minimally invasive and inexpensive blood test that can identify cancer in patients with non-specific symptoms and whether these cancers have metastasised in the body.
Article • Precision medicine
Liquid biopsy: the ‘next frontier’ for cancer detection?
Mark Nicholls reports from the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) virtual Festival, with four expert speakers discussing the role of liquid biopsy in cancer detection.
News • Relapse research
Multiple myeloma: Tracking down resistant cancer cells
In multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow, relapse almost always occurs after treatment. Initially, most patients respond well to therapy. However, as the disease progresses, resistant cancer cells spread in the bone marrow, with fatal consequences for the patients. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg University Hospital (UKHD) and the National Center for…
Article • Cancer imaging
PET/MRI offers significant patient benefits
PET/MRI is offering new imaging opportunities for cancer patients at various points along the care pathway with its ability to assess different biological processes and its increased specificity.
News • Cancer research
How to break through a tumor's protective shield
The immune system protects the body from cancer. To protect healthy body cells from its own immune system, they have developed a protective shield: the protein CD47 is a so called "don’t eat me" signal, which tells the immune cells to stand back. Tumor cells exploit this CD47-based protection strategy for evading the immune system, by increasing presentation of CD47 on their cell…
News • DRUML
New AI offers hope for deadly liver cancer patients
Researchers at King's College Hospital and Queen Mary University of London have shown that a new computer-based algorithm can rank drugs used to treat primary liver cancer, based on their efficacy in reducing cancer cell growth.
Article • Mass spectrometry goes handheld
A pen to pin down the fringes of cancer
Mass spectrometry – a powerful tool for analysing the molecular composition of a tissue sample – is invaluable during cancer surgery. However, mass spectrometers are complex and unwieldy, and certainly a poor fit for an operating room (OR). To create a bridge between the lab and OR, Professor Livia S Eberlin, from Baylor College of Medicine, has developed a very special ‘pen’.
News • Treatment guidance
Metastatic prostate cancer comes in two forms
Scientists have identified two subtypes of metastatic prostate cancer that respond differently to treatment.
News • First-of-its-kind study
Computer-assisted colonoscopies reduces rate of missed lesions
Decreasing the rate of missed lesions could translate into fewer cases of colon cancer.
News • Enhancing T cell response
New targets for cancer vaccines identified
Over the past decade, scientists have been exploring vaccination as a way to help fight cancer. These experimental cancer vaccines are designed to stimulate the body’s own immune system to destroy a tumor, by injecting fragments of cancer proteins found on the tumor.
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…
Article • Precision oncology
Personalized health and genomics: Minimizing collateral damage
A solid diagnosis has always been the first step on any patient’s journey to health. However, diagnostic categories are necessarily oversimplifications. In the last decades, medical professionals and scientists have begun to uncover the true variability in patients’ physiological and biochemical make-up that is the principal cause for individual variations in the way diseases present…
News • Patient empowerment
Should cancer patients participate in tumour conferences?
The goal of tumour conferences is to determine the best treatment for patients with complex cancers – however, the patient is rarely present. Now, a team of researchers has investigated whether cancer patients can benefit from participating in these meetings.
News • Increased processing power
Personalizing cancer treatment with quantum computing
Cancer patients’ medical records can often comprise up to 100 terabytes of individual — and usually very heterogeneous — data, including blood and tumor values, personal indicators, sequencing and treatment data, and much more besides. Up to now, it has been virtually impossible to use this wealth of information efficiently due to a lack of appropriate processing mechanisms. As a result,…
News • Software solution
Using AI to match cancer patients to early phase clinical trials
Cancer informatics and digital pathology provider Inspirata announced that King’s Health Partners ECMC and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust will pilot its Trial Navigator software as part of an evaluation the organisations are conducting into how artificial intelligence based automation can improve the identification and efficiency of matching patients with cancer to early phase…
News • Health economics
Why certified cancer centers are worth the extra input
Quality assurance in cancer medicine has a reputation for being expensive and involving considerable outlay. For the first time, a cost-effectiveness analysis has now shown that patients treated in certified cancer centers not only survived longer than patients in non-certified hospitals, but also cost less, despite the greater resource commitment required. This was established by health…
Article • Oncology
Pancreatic cancer - current challenges and future direction
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers in the world, and one of the most difficult to treat. In 2020, an estimated 495,000 individuals worldwide were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and an estimated 466,000 died, according to statistics from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. Most patients with advanced disease die within a year of…
Article • Screening, early detection, treatment optimisation
AI techniques advancing oncology care
Cancer care and the treatment clinicians can offer patients is being increasingly enhanced by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The technology has a role in diagnosis, with algorithms trained to design and deliver patient care, can match patients to clinical trials they may benefit from, and even help predict outcomes and those at greatest risk.
News • Cancer 'avatars'
Predicting immunotherapy outcomes with mini tumours
Miniature tumours in the lab are able to predict whether the corresponding real-life patients will benefit from immunotherapy. “We’ve solved a major problem many scientists had been facing: preserving a tumours original composition and structure outside of the patient in the lab”, says cancer researcher Daniela Thommen.