
News • Oncology
One more piece in the puzzle of liver cancer identified
Researchers at University of Vienna discover unexpected role of signalling protein in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Researchers at University of Vienna discover unexpected role of signalling protein in hepatocellular carcinoma.

When Kerstin Stenson, MD, describes the innovative technique she is helping develop to fight cancer, it seems like she’s describing a Tom Clancy military espionage novel.

In imaging diagnostics computers are taking over – well, not quite, but they might soon play an important role, according to Professor Hans-Ulrich Kauczor, Medical Director of the Clinic of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at University Hospital Heidelberg. Meeting with European Hospital, he discussed an EU-funded project to assess malignancy in pulmonary nodules and its implications for…

Pathology services in the UK are struggling to cope with the increasing number of patient samples that need to be tested, according to a Cancer Research UK report* published today.

At the MEDICA 2016 IMMS is presenting its first approaches for the personalized diagnostics of cancer using a prototype device. It was developed in the three-year research project INSPECT which started in June 2016.
SCIEX’s donation to the WCRF following several significant research partnerships with world-leading cancer scientists to advance the promise of Precision Medicine.

Brain cancer treatment is taking a major step ahead as Spanish surgeons pioneer a new technique that spares language and motion functions. This splendid development might even one day result in epilepsy surgery.

Scientists have shown that a mutation in a gene called Arid1b can cause liver cancer. The gene normally protects against cancer by limiting cell growth, but when mutated it allows cells to grow uncontrollably. The researchers have shown that two existing drugs can halt this growth in human cells. This points to a new approach to treating liver cancer.

How to cut the high cost of cancer drugs engendered high interest at the recent Forum on Hospital Management held in Vienna.

Patients with locally advanced rectal cancer have been treated with intra-operative radiotherapy (IORT) for over twenty years. Partly due to this type of radiation, survival rates in a group of patients considered to have inoperable cancer changed dramatically from five to 70 percent.
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.