Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, have identified a new growth factor produced by blood vessels that enables tumor cells to metastatically colonize organs.
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…
The goal of tumour conferences is to determine the best treatment for patients with complex cancers. In these interdisciplinary meetings, doctors from various branches of medicine including oncology, radiology, surgery and pathology convene to talk about a patient's case – however, the patient is rarely present. So far, only a few breast cancer and gynaecological centres in Germany offer their…
Researchers at Tel Aviv University have 3D-printed a first-of-its-kind glioblastoma tumor that mimics a living cancer malignancy, powering new methods to improve treatment and accelerate the development of new drugs for the most lethal type of brain cancer. Glioblastoma is notoriously fatal as it accounts for the majority of brain tumors and is highly aggressive. The average survival time of…
To avoid adverse reactions, personalised laboratory medicine can help to predict a patient’s drug response. Investigations based on DNA and other omics technologies – e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics – along with microarray technologies, is making a particularly valuable contribution to cancer care, in which personalised approaches are becoming possible through…
A new study from the University of Helsinki shows that cells that are freshly isolated from lung cancers can be used to create robust drug response data. This approach can identify actionable or non-responsive treatments, illustrated by a case study in which the assay was used to guide the compassionate treatment of a patient.
For the first time, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have shown how cancer cells reprogram themselves to produce lactic acid and to tolerate the acidic environment that exists around tumors. The finding could lead to a whole new direction for treating cancer. The breakthrough is the result of more than 13 years of work. The next step in research could…
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,…
Nanocontainers can transport substances into cells where they can then take effect. This is the method used in, for example, the mRNA vaccines currently being employed against Covid-19 as well as certain cancer drugs. In research, similar transporters can also be used to deliver labelled substances into cells in order to study basic cellular functions. To take advantage of their full potential,…
A novel therapy engineered by Northwestern Medicine investigators improved progression-free and overall survival for patients with newly diagnosed malignant gliomas, according to results from a recent phase I clinical trial.
El laboratorio de Genómica Biomédica del IRB Barcelona (Institute for Research in Biomedicine) ha desarrollado un método computacional que identifica las mutaciones causantes del cáncer para cada tipo de tumor. Este y otros desarrollos del mismo laboratorio buscan acelerar la investigación oncológica y ofrecer herramientas para que los oncólogos puedan elegir el mejor tratamiento para cada…
The Biomedical Genomics laboratory at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) Barcelona has developed a computational tool that identifies cancer driver mutations for each tumour type. This and other developments produced by the same lab seek to accelerate cancer research and provide tools to help oncologists choose the best treatment for each patient. The study has been published in the…
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…
Remote 24-hour monitoring for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy helps to better manage side effects and improve quality of life, finds a study published by The BMJ. The researchers say remote monitoring can provide a safe, secure, and “real time” system that optimises symptom management and supports patients to remain at home - and is particularly relevant in the context of the Covid-19…
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…
The Netherlands Cancer Institute, University of Amsterdam (UvA), and Elekta will collaborate on the development of new AI strategies for the further improvement of precision radiotherapy. This concerns the personalization of treatment by improving the quality of imaging used during treatment, predicting and accounting for changes in the patient’s anatomy over time, and automatically adapting…
Why do alterations of certain genes cause cancer only in specific organs of the human body? Scientists at the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and the University Medical Center Göttingen have now demonstrated that cells originating from different organs are differentially susceptible to activating mutations in cancer drivers: The same mutation in…
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…
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.
