New policy recommendations on preventing occupational exposure to cytotoxic drugs were launched in the European Parliament on 26 April 2016, an important new initiative designed to protect healthcare professionals working across the EU.
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.
Computer programs have defeated humans in Jeopardy!, chess and Go. Now a program developed at Case Western Reserve University has outperformed physicians on a more serious matter.
IBA (Ion Beam Applications) today unveils its unique platform, 'Leading the PATh', which gathers the leading experts in the field of proton therapy all in one place. It is anticipated that 'Leading the PATh' will enable the worldwide medical community to shape the most efficient Proton Adaptive Therapy (PATh), a proton therapy process which improves the accuracy of what is considered to be the…
Cancer thrives when mutated cells undergo frequent division. Most anti-cancer drugs work by inserting themselves in between the DNA base pairs that encode our genetic information. This process is known as intercalation, and it can result in subtle changes to the DNA molecule’s geometric shape or tertiary structure. These structural changes interfere with the DNA’s transcription and a cell’s…
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…
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…
A recent paper published in Nature Communications reveals insights about the element actinium that could support new classes of anticancer drugs. The experiment was conducted by the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with the DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
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…
Rectal cancer surgery - using a Da Vinci robot and conducted by Tas Qureshi, Consultant Surgeon and robotic lead at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust - was beamed live from his operating theatre by satellite to an international conference of specialist doctors, student doctors and to a worldwide audience via multimedia platforms with live audio and twitter feedback.
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.
IBM scientists have developed a new lab-on-a-chip technology that can, for the first time, separate biological particles at the nanoscale and could enable physicians to detect diseases such as cancer before symptoms appear.
The Ligand PD-L1 is one of the most important targets for cancer immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors. But not all tumors have sufficient quantities of PD-L1 ligands on their surface. Scientists from the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) have now shown that different types of cancer possess different quantities of PD-L1-Gen copies. Genetic analysis of the PD-L1 gene may in the future help to…
Many drug treatments do not work due to their poor ability to reach their intended targets inside patients’ cells. To address this, researchers at Cardiff University’s Schools of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Biosciences have designed a highly efficient method to improve the delivery of therapeutic molecules into diseased cells such as those in stomach cancer, breast cancer and…
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology research center in Singapore have developed a new microfluidic device that tests the effects of electric fields on cancer cells. They observed that a range of low-intensity, middle-frequency electric fields effectively stopped breast and lung cancer cells from growing and spreading, while having no adverse effect on neighboring healthy cells.
When an immune T cell divides into two daughter cells, the activity of an enzyme called mTORC1, which controls protein production, splits unevenly between the progeny, producing two cells with different properties. Such "asymmetric division," uncovered by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers using lab-grown cells and specially bred mice, could offer new ways to enhance cancer…
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.
Breast tomosynthesis imaging, Hologic calls it 3-D mammography, is proving to be the best modality to image breast cancer. ‘The Hologic tomosynthesis system has demonstrated superior clinical performance to conventional 2-D mammography in a number of metrics, in particular showing improved detection of invasive cancers and reductions in recall rate,’ the manufacturer reports, adding: ‘Now…
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
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes hepatitis B, an infectious disease that afflicts 230 million people worldwide, thereof 440 000 in Germany. Persistence of the virus in liver cells leads to progressive organ damage in the patient and contributes to a high risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer development. Providing a new paradigm to hepatitis B understanding, researchers at the German Cancer Research…
