A Ludwig Cancer Research study shows that ovarian cancer, which has proved resistant to currently available immunotherapies, could be susceptible to personalized immunotherapy. Led by Alexandre Harari and George Coukos, director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Lausanne, the study shows that ovarian tumors harbor highly reactive killer T cells, which kill infected and...
Year: <span>2018</span>
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New insights into prostate cancer treatment and screening
In four recent publications in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), Maha Hussain, MD, deputy director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, detailed new findings related to therapies for advanced prostate cancer, and called for a balanced approach to early detection of the disease. “This represents a good portion of...
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Researchers develop exciting new vaccine adjuvant
Associate Professors Bridget Stocker and Mattie Timmer from the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences worked with scientists from Japan to develop an adjuvant which can kick-start a powerful immune response and trigger a specific type of T-cell response. Adjuvants are substances that improve the body’s immune response to an antigen. Current vaccines tend to...
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New gene involved in familial breast cancer
An international research consortium led by Dr Jordi Surrallés, director of the Genetics Service at the Hospital de Sant Pau and professor of Genetics at the UAB, and by Dr Miquel Àngel Pujana, director of the ProCURE Research Programme of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO, IDIBELL), has identified a novel gene involved in this...
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Improved capture of cancer cells in blood could help track disease
Tumor cells circulating throughout the body in blood vessels have long been feared as harbingers of metastasizing cancer — even though most free-floating cancer cells will not go on to establish a new tumor. But if these cast-offs could be accurately counted, they could provide an additional way to track treatment or screen for the...
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Scientists discover treatment target for sepsis
In a study published in Nature Communications, Northwestern Medicine scientists demonstrated the key role a molecule called oxPAPC plays in regulating the inflammatory response—findings which could inform the development of new therapies for the body’s life-threatening response to serious infections. Lan Chu, a sixth-year doctoral student in Feinberg’s Driskill Graduate Program in Life Sciences (DGP),...
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Protein analysis for personalised medicine
New knowledge about proteins helps researchers develop innovative solutions for clinical practice, for example to the benefit of patients with Parkinsons’s disease. To this day, there are no therapies that work equally well for all patientsdiagnosed with the same disease. Many conventional therapies are effective in only a limited proportion of cases. And some patients who...
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Synthetic macro molecules kill multi drug-resistant cancer cells
Cancer continues to be a deadly threat to more than 14 million people who are diagnosed each year around the world. At the same time, five-year survival rates have been steadily improving over the last three decades to nearly 70 percent, according to the American Cancer Society. However, current cancer treatment regimens, such as traditional...
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Smart software can diagnose prostate cancer as well as a pathologist
Chinese scientists and clinicians have developed a learning artificial intelligence system which can diagnose and identify cancerous prostate samples as accurately as any pathologist. This holds out the possibility of streamlining and eliminating variation in the process of cancer diagnosis. It may also help overcome any local shortage of trained pathologists. In the longer term...
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Immune system ‘double agent’ could be new ally in cancer fight
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have discovered that an enzyme called TAK1 functions like a “double agent” in the innate immune response, serving as an unexpected regulator of inflammation and cell death. The findings highlight TAK1 inhibition as a potential cancer treatment. TAK1 is a kinase known to promote inflammation. But Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti, Ph.D.,...